THE    REAL    THING 

AND  OTHER  TALES 


THE   REAL  THING 


AND  OTHER  TALES 


BY 

HENRY    JAMES 


gorfc 
MACMILLAN    AND    CO. 

AND    LONDON 

1893 
All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1893, 
BY  MAC  MILL  AN   &  CO. 


Xortoooti  $3rcss : 

J.  S.  Gushing  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith. 
Boston,    Mass  ,    U.S.A. 


NOTE. 

THE   second  of  the  following   tales   bore,  on  its   first 
appearance,  in  The  Cosmopolitan,  a  different  title. 


M608450 


CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

THE  REAL  THING      . 

SIR  DOMINICK  FERRAND     .  45 

NONA  VINCENT  •         •         •         •         •     I3I 

THE  CHAPERON 

GREVILLE  FANE         ....  .249 

vii 


THE  REAL  THING. 


THE   REAL  THING. 
I. 

WHEN  the  porter's  wife  (she  used  to  answer  the 
house-bell),  announced  "A  gentleman  —  with  a  lady, 
sir,"  I  had,  as  I  often  had  in  those  days,  for  the 
wish  was  father  to  the  thought,  an  immediate  vision 
of  sitters.  Sitters  my  visitors  in  this  case  proved  to 
be ;  but  not  in  the  sense  I  should  have  preferred. 
However,  there  was  nothing  at  first  to  indicate  that 
they  might  not  have  come  for  a  portrait.  The  gen 
tleman,  a  man  of  fifty,  very  high  and  very  straight, 
with  a  moustache  slightly  grizzled  and  a  dark  grey 
walking-coat  admirably  fitted,  both  of  which  I  noted 
professionally  —  I  don't  mean  as  a  barber  or  yet  as 
a  tailor  —  would  have  struck  me  as  a  celebrity  if 
celebrities  often  were  striking.  It  was  a  truth  of 
which  I  had  for  some  time  been  conscious  that  a 
figure  with  a  good  deal  of  frontage  was,  as  one  might 
say,  almost  never  a  public  institution.  A  glance  at 
the  lady  helped  to  remind  me  of  this  paradoxical 
law:  she  also  looked  too  distinguished  to  be  a  "per 
sonality."  Moreover  one  would  scarcely  come  across 
two  variations  together. 

Neither  of  the  pair  spoke  immediately  —  they  only 


2  THE  ^REAL   THING. 

prolonged  the  preliminary  gaze  which  suggested  that 
each  wished  to  give  the  other  a  chance.  They  were 
visibly  shy ;  they  stood  there  letting  me  take  them 
in  —  which,  as  I  afterwards  perceived,  was  the  most 
practical  thing  they  could  have  done.  In  this  way 
their  embarrassment  served  their  cause.  I  had  seen 
people  painfully  reluctant  to  mention  that  they 
desired  anything  so  gross  as  to  be  represented 
on  canvas ;  but  the  scruples  of  my  new  friends 
appeared  almost  insurmountable.  Yet  the  gentle 
man  might  have  said  "  I  should  like  a  portrait  of 
my  wife,"  and  the  lady  might  have  said  "  I  should 
like  a  portrait  of  my  husband."  Perhaps  they  were 
not  husband  and  wife  —  this  naturally  would  make 
the  matter  more  delicate.  Perhaps  they  wished  to 
be  done  together  —  in  which  case  they  ought  to 
have  brought  a  third  person  to  break  the  news. 

"We  come  from  Mr.  Rivet,"  the  lady  said  at  last, 
with  a  dim  smile  which  had  the  effect  of  a  moist 
sponge  passed  over  a  "  sunk  "  piece  of  painting,  as 
well  as  of  a  vague  allusion  to  vanished  beauty.  She 
was  as  tall  and  straight,  in  her  degree,  as  her  com 
panion,  and  with  ten  years  less  to  carry.  She  looked 
as  sad  as  a  woman  could  look  whose  face  was  not 
charged  with  expression;  that  is  her  tinted  oval 
mask  showed  friction  as  an  exposed  surface  shows 
it.  The  hand  of  time  had  played  over  her  freely, 
but  only  to  simplify.  She  was  slim  and  stiff,  and 
so  well-dressed,  in  dark  blue  cloth,  with  lappets  and 
pockets  and  buttons,  that  it  was  clear  she  employed 


THE    REAL    THING.  3 

the  same  tailor  as  her  husband.  The  couple  had  an 
indefinable  air  of  prosperous  thrift  —  they  evidently 
got  a  good  deal  of  luxury  for  their  money.  If  I  was 
to  be  one  of  their  luxuries  it  would  behove  me  to 
consider  my  terms. 

"  Ah,  Claude  Rivet  recommended  me  ? "  I  in 
quired  ;  and  I  added  that  it  was  very  kind  of  him, 
though  I  could  reflect  that,  as  he  only  painted  land 
scape,  this  was  not  a  sacrifice. 

The  lady  looked  very  hard  at  the  gentleman,  and 
the  gentleman  looked  round  the  room.  Then  staring 
at  the  floor  a  moment  and  stroking  his  moustache, 
he  rested  his  pleasant  eyes  on  me  with  the  remark : 
"  He  said  you  were  the  right  one." 

"  I  try  to  be,  when  people  want  to  sit." 

"Yes,  we  should  like  to,"  said  the  lady  anxiously. 

"  Do  you  mean  together  ?  " 

My  visitors  exchanged  a  glance.  "  If  you  could 
do  anything  with  me,  I  suppose  it  would  be  double," 
the  gentleman  stammered. 

"  Oh  yes,  there's  naturally  a  higher  charge  for 
two  figures  than  for  one." 

"We  should  like  to  make  it  pay,"  the  husband 
confessed. 

"That's  very  good  of  you,"  I  returned,  appreciat 
ing  so  unwonted  a  sympathy  —  for  I  supposed  he 
meant  pay  the  artist. 

A  sense  of  strangeness  seemed  to  dawn  on  the 
lady.  "We  mean  for  the  illustrations  —  Mr.  Rivet 
said  you  might  put  one  in." 


4  THE    REAL    THING. 

"  Put  one  in  —  an  illustration  ?  "  I  was  equally 
confused. 

"  Sketch  her  off,  you  know,"  said  the  gentleman, 
colouring. 

It  was  only  then  that  I  understood  the  service 
Claude  Rivet  had  rendered  me  ;  he  had  told  them 
that  I  worked  in  black  and  white,  for  magazines,  for 
story-books,  for  sketches  of  contemporary  life,  and 
consequently  had  frequent  employment  for  models. 
These  things  were  true,  but  it  was  not  less  true  (I 
may  confess  it  now  —  whether  because  the  aspiration 
was  to  lead  to  everything  or  to  nothing  I  leave  the 
reader  to  guess),  that  I  couldn't  get  the  honours,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  emoluments,  of  a  great  painter  of 
portraits  out  of  my  head.  My  "  illustrations  "  were 
my  pot-boilers ;  I  looked  to  a  different  branch  of  art 
(far  and  away  the  most  interesting  it  had  always 
seemed  to  me),  to  perpetuate  my  fame.  There  was 
no  shame  in  looking  to  it  also  to  make  my  fortune ; 
but  that  fortune  was  by  so  much  further  from  being 
made  from  the  moment  my  visitors  wished  to  be 
"  done  "  for  nothing.  I  was  disappointed  ;  for  in  the 
pictorial  sense  I  had  immediately  seen  them.  I  had 
seized  their  type  —  I  had  already  settled  what  I 
would  do  with  it.  Something  that  wouldn't  abso 
lutely  have  pleased  them,  I  afterwards  reflected. 

"  Ah,  you're  —  you're  —  a  —  ?  "  I  began,  as  soon 
as  I  had  mastered  my  surprise.  I  couldn't  bring  out 
the  dingy  word  "  models  " ;  it  seemed  to  fit  the  case 
so  little. 


THE    REAL    THING.  5 

"  We  haven't  had  much  practice,"  said  the  lady. 

"  We've  got  to  do  something,  and  we've  thought 
that  an  artist  in  your  line  might  perhaps  make 
something  of  us,"  her  husband  threw  off.  He  fur 
ther  mentioned  that  they  didn't  know  many  artists 
and  that  they  had  gone  first,  on  the  off-chance  (he 
painted  views  of  course,  but  sometimes  put  in  fig 
ures —  perhaps  I  remembered),  to  Mr.  Rivet,  whom 
they  had  met  a  few  years  before  at  a  place  in 
Norfolk  where  he  was  sketching. 

"  We  used  to  sketch  a  little  ourselves,"  the  lady 
hinted. 

"  It's  very  awkward,  but  we  absolutely  must  do 
something,"  her  husband  went  on. 

"  Of  course,  we're  not  so  very  young,"  she  ad 
mitted,  with  a  wan  smile. 

With  the  remark  that  I  might  as  well  know  some 
thing  more  about  them,  the  husband  had  handed  me 
a  card  extracted  from  a  neat  new  pocket-book  (their 
appurtenances  were  all  of  the  freshest)  and  inscribed 
with  the  words  "  Major  Monarch."  Impressive  as 
these  words  were  they  didn't  carry  my  knowledge 
much  further;  but  my  visitor  presently  added :  "  I've 
left  the  army,  and  we've  had  the  misfortune  to  lose 
our  money.  In  fact  our  means  are  dreadfully 
small." 

"  It's  an  awful  bore,"  said  Mrs.  Monarch. 

They  evidently  wished  to  be  discreet  —  to  take 
care  not  to  swagger  because  they  were  gentlefolks. 
I  perceived  they  would  have  been  willing  to  recog- 


6  THE    REAL    THING. 

nise  this  as  something  of  a  drawback,  at  the  same 
time  that  I  guessed  at  an  underlying  sense  —  their 
consolation  in  adversity  —  that  they  had  their  points. 
They  certainly  had ;  but  these  advantages  struck  me 
as  preponderantly  social ;  such  for  instance  as  would 
help  to  make  a  drawing-room  look  well.  However, 
a  drawing-room  was  always,  or  ought  to  be,  a 
picture. 

In  consequence  of  his  wife's  allusion  to  their  age 
Major  Monarch  observed :  "  Naturally,  it's  more  for 
the  figure  that  we  thought  of  going  in.  We  can 
still  hold  ourselves  up."  On  the  instant  I  saw  that 
the  figure  was  indeed  their  strong  point.  His  "  nat 
urally  "  didn't  sound  vain,  but  it  lighted  up  the 
question.  "  She  has  got  the  best,"  he  continued, 
nodding  at  his  wife,  with  a  pleasant  after-dinner 
absence  of  circumlocution.  I  could  only  reply,  as 
if  we  were  in  fact  sitting  over  our  wine,  that  this 
didn't  prevent  his  own  from  being  very  good ;  which 
led  him  in  turn  to  rejoin :  "  We  thought  that  if  you 
ever  have  to  do  people  like  us,  we  might  be  some 
thing  like  it.  She,  particularly  —  for  a  lady  in  a 
book,  you  know." 

I  was  so  amused  by  them  that,  to  get  more  of  it, 
I  did  my  best  to  take  their  point  of  view ;  and 
though  it  was  an  embarrassment  to  find  myself 
appraising  physically,  as  if  they  were  animals  on 
hire  or  useful  blacks,  a  pair  whom  I  should  have 
expected  to  meet  only  in  one  of  the  relations  in 
which  criticism  is  tacit,  I  looked  at  Mrs.  Monarch 


THE    REAL    THING.  / 

judicially  enough  to  be  able  to  exclaim,  after  a 
moment,  with  conviction  :  "  Oh  yes,  a  lady  in  a 
book  !  "  She  was  singularly  like  a  bad  illustration. 

" We'll  stand  up,  if  you  like,"  said  the  Major;  and 
he  raised  himself  before  me  writh  a  really  grand  air. 

I  could  take  his  measure  at  a  glance  —  he  was  six 
feet  two  and  a  perfect  gentleman.  It  would  have 
paid  any  club  in  process  of  formation  and  in  want 
of  a  stamp  to  engage  him  at  a  salary  to  stand  in 
the  principal  window.  What  struck  me  immediately 
was  that  in  coming  to  me  they  had  rather  missed 
their  vocation  ;  they  could  surely  have  been  turned 
to  better  account  for  advertising  purposes.  I 
couldn't  of  course  see  the  thing  in  detail,  but  I 
could  see  them  make  someone's  fortune  —  I  don't 
mean  their  own.  There  was  something  in  them  for 
a  waistcoat-maker,  an  hotel-keeper  or  a  soap-vendor. 
I  could  imagine  "We  always  use  it"  pinned  on  their 
bosoms  with  the  greatest  effect;  I  had  a  vision  of 
the  promptitude  with  which  they  would  launch  a 
table  d'hote. 

Mrs.  Monarch  sat  still,  not  from  pride  but  from 
shyness,  and  presently  her  husband  said  to  her : 
"  Get  up  my  dear  and  show  how  smart  you  are." 
She  obeyed,  but  she  had  no  need  to  get  up  to  show 
it.  She  walked  to  the  end  of  the  studio,  and  then 
she  came  back  blushing,  with  her  fluttered  eyes  on 
her  husband.  I  was  reminded  of  an  incident  I  had 
accidentally  had  a  glimpse  of  in  Paris  —  being  with 
a  friend  there,  a  dramatist  about  to  produce  a  play  — 


8  THE    REAL    THING. 

when  an  actress  came  to  him  to  ask  to  be  intrusted 
with  a  part.  She  went  through  her  paces  before 
him,  walked  up  and  down  as  Mrs.  Monarch  was 
doing.  Mrs.  Monarch  did  it  quite  as  well,  but  I 
abstained  from  applauding.  It  was  very  odd  to  see 
such  people  apply  for  such  poor  pay.  She  looked 
as  if  she  had  ten  thousand  a  year.  Her  husband 
had  used  the  word  that  described  her :  she  was,  in 
the  London  current  jargon,  essentially  and  typically 
"  smart."  Her  figure  was,  in  the  same  order  of 
ideas,  conspicuously  and  irreproachably  "  good." 
For  a  woman  of  her  age  her  waist  was  surprisingly 
small ;  her  elbow  moreover  had  the  orthodox  crook. 
She  held  her  head  at  the  conventional  angle ;  but 
why  did  she  come  to  me  ?  She  ought  to  have  tried 
on  jackets  at  a  big  shop.  I  feared  my  visitors  were 
not  only  destitute,  but  "  artistic  "  -  which  would  be 
a  great  complication.  When  she  sat  down  again  I 
thanked  her,  observing  that  what  a  draughtsman 
most  valued  in  his  model  was  the  faculty  of  keeping 
quiet. 

"  Oh,  she  can  keep  quiet,"  said  Major  Monarch. 
Then  he  added,  jocosely :  "  I've  always  kept  her 
quiet." 

"  I'm  not  a  nasty  fidget,  am  I  ? "  Mrs.  Monarch 
appealed  to  her  husband. 

He  addressed  his  answer  to  me.  "  Perhaps  it  isn't 
out  of  place  to  mention  —  because  we  ought  to  be 
quite  business-like,  oughtn't  we  ?  —  that  when  I 
married  her  she  was  known  as  the  Beautiful  Statue." 


THE    REAL    THING.  9 

"  Oh  dear !  "  said  Mrs.  Monarch,  ruefully. 

"  Of  course  I  should  want  a  certain  amount  of 
expression,"  I  rejoined. 

"  Of  course  !  "  they  both  exclaimed. 

''And  then  I  suppose  you  know  that  you'll  get 
awfully  tired." 

"  Oh,  we  never  get  tired  !  "  they  eagerly  cried. 

"  Have  you  had  any  kind  of  practice  ?  " 

They  hesitated  --  they  looked  at  each  other. 
"We've  been  photographed,  immensely"  said  Mrs. 
Monarch. 

"  She  means  the  fellows  have  asked  us,"  added  the 
Major. 

"I  see  —  because  you're  so  good-looking." 

"  I  don't  know  what  they  thought,  but  they  were 
always  after  us." 

"We  always  got  our  photographs  for  nothing," 
smiled  Mrs.  Monarch. 

"We  might  have  brought  some,  my  dear,"  her 
husband  remarked. 

"  I'm  not  sure  we  have  any  left.  We've  given 
quantities  away,"  she  explained  to  me. 

"With  our  autographs  and  that  sort  of  thing," 
said  the  Major. 

"  Are  they  to  be  got  in  the  shops  ?  "  I  inquired,  as 
a  harmless  pleasantry. 

"Oh,  yes;  hers  —  they  used  to  be." 

"Not  now,"  said  Mrs.  Monarch,  with  her  eyes  on 
the  floor. 


IO  THE    REAL    THING. 


II. 


I  COULD  fancy  the  "sort  of  thing"  they  put  on 
the  presentation-copies  of  their  photographs,  and  I 
was  sure  they  wrote  a  beautiful  hand.  It  was  odd 
how  quickly  I  was  sure  of  everything  that  concerned 
them.  If  they  were  now  so  poor  as  to  have  to  earn 
shillings  and  pence,  they  never  had  had  much  of  a 
margin.  Their  good  looks  had  been  their  capital, 
and  they  had  good-humouredly  made  the  most  of  the 
career  that  this  resource  marked  out  for  them.  It 
was  in  their  faces,  the  blankness,  the  deep  intellect 
ual  repose  of  the  twenty  years  of  country-house  visit 
ing  which  had  given  them  pleasant  intonations.  I 
could  see  the  sunny  drawing-rooms,  sprinkled  with 
periodicals  she  didn't  read,  in  which  Mrs.  Monarch 
had  continuously  sat ;  I  could  see  the  wet  shrub 
beries  in  which  she  had  walked,  equipped  to  admi 
ration  for  either  exercise.  I  could  see  the  rich 
covers  the  Major  had  helped  to  shoot  and  the  won 
derful  garments  in  which,  late  at  night,  he  repaired 
to  the  smoking-room  to  talk  about  them.  I  could 
imagine  their  leggings  and  waterproofs,  their  know 
ing  tweeds  and  rugs,  their  rolls  of  sticks  and  cases 
of  tackle  and  neat  umbrellas ;  and  I  could  evoke  the 
exact  appearance  of  their  servants  and  the  compact 
variety  of  their  luggage  on  the  platforms  of  country 
stations. 

They  gave  small  tips,  but  they  were  liked ;  they 


THE    REAL    THING.  II 

didn't  do  anything  themselves,  but  they  were  wel 
come.  They  looked  so  well  everywhere;  they  grati 
fied  the  general  relish  for  stature,  complexion  and 
"form."  They  knew  it  without  fatuity  or  vulgarity, 
and  they  respected  themselves  in  consequence.  They 
were  not  superficial ;  they  were  thorough  and  kept 
themselves  up  —  it  had  been  their  line.  People  with 
such  a  taste  for  activity  had  to  have  some  line.  I 
could  feel  how,  even  in  a  dull  house,  they  could  have 
been  counted  upon  for  cheerfulness.  At  present 
something  had  happened  —  it  didn't  matter  what, 
their  little  income  had  grown  less,  it  had  grown  least 
—  and  they  had  to  do  something  for  pocket-money. 
Their  friends  liked  them,  but  didn't  like  to  support 
them.  There  was  something  about  them  that  repre 
sented  credit  —  their  clothes,  their  manners,  their 
type ;  but  if  credit  is  a  large  empty  pocket  in  which 
an  occasional  chink  reverberates,  the  chink  at  least 
must  be  audible.  What  they  wanted  of  me  was  to 
help  to  make  it  so.  Fortunately  they  had  no  chil 
dren  —  I  soon  divined  that.  They  would  also  per 
haps  wish  our  relations  to  be  kept  secret :  this  was 
why  it  was  "for  the  figure"  —  the  reproduction  of 
the  face  would  betray  them. 

I  liked  them  —  they  were  so  simple;  and  I  had  no 
objection  to  them  if  they  would  suit.     But,  somehow, 
with  all  their  perfections  I  didn't  easily  believe  in 
them.     After  all  they  were  amateurs,  and  the  ruling  \ 
passion  of  my  life  was  the  detestation  of  the  amateur.    ! 
Combined   with   this   was    another    perversity  —  an 


12  THE    REAL    THING. 

innate  preference  for  the  represented  subject  over 
the  real  one  :  the  defect  of  the  real  one  was  so  apt 
to  be  a  lack  of  representation.  I  liked  things  that 
appeared ;  then  one  was  sure.  Whether  they  were 
or  not  was  a  subordinate  and  almost  always  a  profit 
less  question.  There  were  other  considerations,  the 
first  of  which  was  that  I  already  had  two  or  three 
people  in  use,  notably  a  young  person  with  big  feet, 
in  alpaca,  from  Kilburn,  who  for  a  couple  of  years 
had  come  to  me  regularly  for  my  illustrations  and 
with  whom  I  was  still  —  perhaps  ignobly — satisfied. 
I  frankly  explained  to  my  visitors  how  the  case 
stood ;  but  they  had  taken  more  precautions  than  I 
supposed.  They  had  reasoned  out  their  opportunity, 
for  Claude  Rivet  had  told  them  of  the  projected 
edition  de  luxe  of  one  of  the  writers  of  our  day  —  the 
rarest  of  the  novelists  —  who,  long  neglected  by  the 
multitudinous  vulgar  and  dearly  prized  by  the  atten 
tive  (need  I  mention  Philip  Vincent?)  had  had  the 
happy  fortune  of  seeing,  late  in  life,  the  dawn  and 
then  the  full  light  of  a  higher  criticism  —  an  estimate 
in  which,  on  the  part  of  the  public,  there  was  some 
thing  really  of  expiation.  The  edition  in  question, 
planned  by  a  publisher  of  taste,  was  practically  an  act 
of  high  reparation  ;  the  wood-cuts  with  which  it  was 
to  be  enriched  were  the  homage  of  English  art  to  one 
of  the  most  independent  representatives  of  English 
letters.  Major  and  Mrs.  Monarch  confessed  to  me 
that  they  had  hoped  I  might  be  able  to  work  them 
into  my  share  of  the  enterprise.  They  knew  I  was  to 


THE    REAL    THING.  13 

do  the  first  of  the  books,  "  Rutland  Ramsay,"  but  I 
had  to  make  clear  to  them  that  my  participation  in 
the  rest  of  the  affair  —  this  first  book  was  to  be  a  test 
—  was  to  depend  on  the  satisfaction  I  should  give. 
If  this  should  be  limited  my  employers  would  drop 
me  without  a  scruple.  It  was  therefore  a  crisis  for 
me,  and  naturally  I  was  making  special  preparations, 
looking  about  for  new  people,  if  they  should  be  neces 
sary,  and  securing  the  best  types.  I  admitted  how 
ever  that  I  should  like  to  settle  down  to  two  or  three 
good  models  who  would  do  for  everything. 

"Should  we  have  often  to  —  a  —  put  on  special 
clothes?"  Mrs.  Monarch  timidly  demanded. 

"  Dear,  yes  —  that's  half  the  business." 

"And  should  we  be  expected  to  supply  our  own 
costumes  ? " 

"Oh,  no;  I've  got  a  lot  of  things.  A  painter's 
models  put  on —  or  put  off — anything  he  likes." 

"  And  do  you  mean  —  a  —  the  same  ?  " 

"  The  same  ?  " 

Mrs.  Monarch  looked  at  her  husband  again. 

"Oh,  she  was  just  wondering,"  he  explained,  "if 
the  costumes  are  in  general  use."  I  had  to  confess 
that  they  were,  and  I  mentioned  further  that  some 
of  them  (I  had  a  lot  of  genuine,  greasy  last-century 
things),  had  served  their  time,  a  hundred  years  ago, 
on  living,  world-stained  men  and  women.  "We'll 
put  on  anything  that  fits,"  said  the  Major. 

"  Oh,  I  arrange  that  —  they  fit  in  the  pictures." 

"I'm   afraid   I   should   do  better  for  the    modern 


14  THE    REAL    THING. 

books.  I  would  come  as  you  like,"  said  Mrs.  Mon 
arch. 

"  She  has  got  a  lot  of  clothes  at  home  :  they  might 
do  for  contemporary  life,"  her  husband  continued. 

"  Oh,  I  can  fancy  scenes  in  which  you'd  be  quite 
natural."  And  indeed  I  could  see  the  slipshod  re 
arrangements  of  stale  properties — the  stories  I  tried 
to  produce  pictures  for  without  the  exasperation  of 
reading  them  —  whose  sandy  tracts  the  good  lady 
might  help  to  people.  But  I  had  to  return  to  the 
fact  that  for  this  sort  of  work —  the  daily  mechanical 
grind  —  I  was  already  equipped ;  the  people  I  was 
working  with  were  fully  adequate. 

"  We  only  thought  we  might  be  more  like  some 
characters,"  said  Mrs.  Monarch  mildly,  getting  up. 

Her  husband  also  rose;  he  stood  looking  at  me 
with  a  dim  wistfulness  that  was  touching  in  so  fine  a 
man.  "Wouldn't  it  be  rather  a  pull  sometimes  to 
have  —  a  —  to  have  —  ?  "  He  hung  fire  ;  he  wanted 
me  to  help  him  by  phrasing  what  he  meant.  But  I 
couldn't  —  I  didn't  know.  So  he  brought  it  out,  awk 
wardly  :  "  The  real  thing  ;  a  gentleman,  you  know,  or 
a  lady."  I  was  quite  ready  to  give  a  general  assent 
—  I  admitted  that  there  was  a  great  deal  in  that. 
This  encouraged  Major  Monarch  to  say,  following  up 
his  appeal  with  an  unacted  gulp  :  "  It's  awfully  hard 
—  we've  tried  everything."  The  gulp  was  communi 
cative  ;  it  proved  too  much  for  his  wife.  Before  I 
knew  it  Mrs.  Monarch  had  dropped  again  upon  a 
divan  and  burst  into  tears.  Her  husband  sat  down 


THE    REAL    THING.  15 

beside  her,  holding  one  of  her  hands ;  whereupon 
she  quickly  dried  her  eyes  with  the  other,  while  I  felt 
embarrassed  as  she  looked  up  at  me.  "  There  isn't  a 
confounded  job  I  haven't  applied  for — waited  for  — 
prayed  for.  You  can  fancy  we'd  be  pretty  bad  first. 
Secretaryships  and  that  sort  of  thing  ?  You  might 
as  well  ask  for  a  peerage.  I'd  be  anytJiing — I'm 
strong;  a  messenger  or  a  coalheaver.  I'd  put  on  a 
gold-laced  cap  and  open  carriage-doors  in  front  of 
the  haberdasher's;  I'd  hang  about  a  station,  to  carry 
portmanteaus;  I'd  be  a  postman.  But  they  won't 
look  at  you ;  there  are  thousands,  as  good  as  yourself, 
already  on  the  ground.  Gentlemen,  poor  beggars, 
who  have  drunk  their  wine,  who  have  kept  their 
hunters !  " 

I  was  as  reassuring  as  I  knew  how  to  be,  and  my 
visitors  were  presently  on  their  feet  again  while,  for 
the  experiment,  we  agreed  on  an  hour.  We  were 
discussing  it  when  the  door  opened  and  Miss  Churm 
came  in  with  a  wet  umbrella.  Miss  Churm  had  to 
take  the  omnibus  to  Maida  Vale  and  then  walk 
half-a-mile.  She  looked  a  trifle  blowsy  and  slightly 
splashed.  I  scarcely  ever  saw  her  come  in  without 
thinking  afresh  how  odd  it  was  that,  being  so  little  in 
herself,  she  should  yet  be  so  much  in  others.  She 
was  a  meagre  little  Miss  Churm,  but  she  was  an 
ample  heroine  of  romance.  She  was  only  a  freckled 
cockney,  but  she  could  represent  everything,  from 
a  fine  lady  to  a  shepherdess ;  she  had  the  faculty, 
as  she  might  have  had  a  fine  voice  or  long  hair. 


1 6  THE    REAL    THING. 

She  couldn't  spell,  and  she  loved  beer,  but  she  had 
two  or  three  "  points,"  and  practice,  and  a  knack, 
and  mother-wit,  and  a  kind  of  whimsical  sensibility, 
and  a  love  of  the  theatre,  and  seven  sisters,  and  not 
an  ounce  of  respect,  especially  for  the  h.  The  first 
thing  my  visitors  saw  was  that  her  umbrella  was  wet, 
and  in  their  spotless  perfection  they  visibly  winced  at 
it.  The  rain  had  come  on  since  their  arrival. 

"  I'm  all  in  a  soak;  there  was  a  mess  of  people  in 
the  'bus.  I  wish  you  lived  near  a  stytion,"  said  Miss 
Churm.  I  requested  her  to  get  ready  as  quickly  as 
possible,  and  she  passed  into  the  room  in  which  she 
always  changed  her  dress.  But  before  going  out  she 
asked  me  what  she  was  to  get  into  this  time. 

"It's  the  Russian  princess,  don't  you  know?"  I 
answered;  "the  one  with  the  'golden  eyes,'  in  black 
velvet,  for  the  long  thing  in  the  Cheapside" 

"Golden  eyes?  I  say!"  cried  Miss  Churm,  while 
my  companions  watched  her  with  intensity  as  she 
withdrew.  She  always  arranged  herself,  when  she 
was  late,  before  I  could  turn  round ;  and  I  kept  my 
visitors  a  little,  on  purpose,  so  that  they  might  get 
an  idea,  from  seeing  her,  what  would  be  expected  of 
themselves.  I  mentioned  that  she  was  quite  my 
notion  of  an  excellent  model  —  she  was  really  very 
clever. 

"  Do  you  think  she  looks  like  a  Russian  princess  ?  " 
Major  Monarch  asked,  with  lurking  alarm. 

"When  I  make  her,  yes." 

"  Oh,  if  you  have  to  make  her  —  !  "  he  reasoned, 


acutely. 


THE    REAL    THING.  I/ 

"  That's  the  most  you  can  ask.  There  are  so  many 
that  are  not  makeable." 

"  Well  now,  here's  a  lady  "  —  and  with  a  persuasive 
smile  he  passed  his  arm  into  his  wife's  — "  who's 
already  made !  " 

"  Oh,  I'm  not  a  Russian  princess,"  Mrs.  Monarch 
protested,  a  little  coldly.  I  could  see  that  she  had 
known  some  and  didn't  like  them.  There,  immedi 
ately,  was  a  complication  of  a  kind  that  I  never  had 
to  fear  with  Miss  Churm. 

This  young  lady  came  back  in  black  velvet  —  the 
gown  was  rather  rusty  and  very  low  on  her  lean 
shoulders  —  and  with  a  Japanese  fan  in  her  red 
hands.  I  reminded  her  that  in  the  scene  I  was  doing 
she  had  to  look  over  someone's  head.  "  I  forget 
whose  it  is ;  but  it  doesn't  matter.  Just  look  over  a 
head." 

"  I'd  rather  look  over  a  stove,"  said  Miss  Churm; 
and  she  took  her  station  near  the  fire.  She  fell  into 
position,  settled  herself  into  a  tall  attitude,  gave  a 
certain  backward  inclination  to  her  head  and  a  cer 
tain  forward  droop  to  her  fan,  and  looked,  at  least 
to  my  prejudiced  sense,  distinguished  and  charming, 
foreign  and  dangerous.  We  left  her  looking  so, 
while  I  went  down-stairs  with  Major  and  Mrs. 
Monarch. 

"  I  think  I  could  come  about  as  near  it  as  that," 
said  Mrs.  Monarch. 

"  Oh,  you  think  she's  shabby,  but  you  must  allow 
for  the  alchemy  of  art." 


1 8  THE    REAL    THING. 

However,  they  went  off  with  an  evident  increase  of 
comfort,  founded  on  their  demonstrable  advantage  in 
being  the  real  thing.  I  could  fancy  them  shuddering 
over  Miss  Churm.  She  was  very  droll  about  them 
when  I  went  back,  for  I  told  her  what  they  wanted. 

"Well,  if  she  can  sit  I'll  tyke  to  bookkeeping," 
said  my  model. 

"  She's  very  lady-like,"  I  replied,  as  an  innocent 
form  of  aggravation. 

"  So  much  the  worse  for  yon.  That  means  she 
can't  turn  round." 

"  She'll  do  for  the  fashionable  novels." 

"  Oh  yes,  she'll  do  for  them  !  "  my  model  humor 
ously  declared.  "  Ain't  they  bad  enough  without 
her  ?  "  I  had  often  sociably  denounced  them  to  Miss 
Churm. 


III. 


IT  was  for  the  elucidation  of  a  mystery  in  one  of 
these  works  that  I  first  tried  Mrs.  Monarch.  Her 
husband  came  with  her,  to  be  useful  if  necessary  - 
it  was  sufficiently  clear  that  as  a  general  thing  he 
would  prefer  to  come  with  her.  At  first  I  wondered 
if  this  were  for  "  propriety's  "  sake  —  if  he  were  going 
to  be  jealous  and  meddling.  The  idea  was  too  tire 
some,  and  if  it  had  been  confirmed  it  would  speedily 
have  brought  our  acquaintance  to  a  close.  But  I 
soon  saw  there  was  nothing  in  it  and  that  if  he  accom 
panied  Mrs.  Monarch  it  was  (in  addition  to  the  chance 


THE    REAL    THING.  1 9 

of  being  wanted),  simply  because  he  had  nothing  else 
to  do.  When  she  was  away  from  him  his  occupation 
was  gone  —  she  never  had  been  away  from  him.  I 
judged,  rightly,  that  in  their  awkward  situation  their 
close  union  was  their  main  comfort  and  that  this 
union  had  no  weak  spot.  It  was  a  real  marriage,  an 
encouragement  to  the  hesitating,  a  nut  for  pessimists 
to  crack.  Their  address  was  humble  (I  remember 
afterwards  thinking  it  had  been  the  only  thing  about 
them  that  was  really  professional),  and  I  could  fancy 
the  lamentable  lodgings  in  which  the  Major  would 
have  been  left  alone.  He  could  bear  them  with  his 
wife  —  he  couldn't  bear  them  without  her. 

He  had  too  much  tact  to  try  and  make  himself 
agreeable  when  he  couldn't  be  useful ;  so  he  simply 
sat  and  waited,  when  I  was  too  absorbed  in  my  work 
to  talk.  But  I  liked  to  make  him  talk  —  it  made 
my  work,  when  it  didn't  interrupt  it,  less  sordid,  less 
special.  To  listen  to  him  was  to  combine  the  excite 
ment  of  going  out  with  the  economy  of  staying  at 
home.  There  was  only  one  hindrance  :  that  I  seemed 
not  to  know  any  of  the  people  he  and  his  wife  had 
known.  I  think  he  wondered  extremely,  during  the 
term  of  our  intercourse,  whom  the  deuce  I  did  know. 
He  hadn't  a  stray  sixpence  of  an  idea  to  fumble  for ; 
so  we  didn't  spin  it  very  fine  —  we  confined  ourselves 
to  questions  of  leather  and  even  of  liquor  (saddlers 
and  breeches-makers  and  how  to  get  good  claret 
cheap),  and  matters  like  "good  trains  "  and  the  habits 
of  small  game.  His  lore  on  these  last  subjects  was 


20  THE    REAL    THING. 

astonishing,  he  managed  to  interweave  the  station- 
master  with  the  ornithologist.  When  he  couldn't 
talk  about  greater  things  he  could  talk  cheerfully 
about  smaller,  and  since  I  couldn't  accompany  him 
into  reminiscences  of  the  fashionable  world  he  could 
lower  the  conversation  without  a  visible  effort  to  my 
level. 

So  earnest  a  desire  to  please  was  touching  in  a 
man  who  could  so  easily  have  knocked  one  down. 
He  looked  after  the  fire  and  had  an  opinion  on  the 
draught  of  the  stove,  without  my  asking  him,  and  I 
could  see  that  he  thought  many  of  my  arrangements 
not  half  clever  enough.  I  remember  telling  him  that 
if  I  were  only  rich  I  would  offer  him  a  salary  to  come 
and  teach  me  how  to  live.  Sometimes  he  gave  a 
random  sigh,  of  which  the  essence  was:  "Give  me 
even  such  a  bare  old  barrack  as  this,  and  I'd  do 
something  with  it!"  When  I  wanted  to  use  him  he 
came  alone  ;  which  was  an  illustration  of  the  supe 
rior  courage  of  women.  His  wife  could  bear  her 
solitary  second  floor,  and  she  was  in  general  more 
discreet;  showing  by  various  small  reserves  that  she 
was  alive  to  the  propriety  of  keeping  our  relations 
markedly  professional  —  not  letting  them  slide  into 
sociability.  She  wished  it  to  remain  clear  that  she 
and  the  Major  were  employed,  not  cultivated,  and  if 
she  approved  of  me  as  a  superior,  who  could  be  kept 
in  his  place,  she  never  thought  me  quite  good  enough 
for  an  equal. 

She  sat  with  great  intensity,  giving  the  whole  of 


THE    REAL    THING.  21 

her  mind  to  it,  and  was  capable  of  remaining  for 
an  hour  almost  as  motionless  as  if  she  were  before 
a  photographer's  lens.  I  could  see  she  had  been 
photographed  often,  but  somehow  the  very  habit  that 
made  her  good  for  that  purpose  unfitted  her  for  mine. 
At  first  I  was  extremely  pleased  with  her  lady-like 
air,  and  it  was  a  satisfaction,  on  coming  to  follow  her 
lines,  to  see  how  good  they  were  and  how  far  they 
could  lead  the  pencil.  But  after  a  few  times  I  began 
to  find  her  too  insurmountably  stiff;  do  what  I  would 
with  it  my  drawing  looked  like  a  photograph  or  a 
copy  of  a  photograph.  Her  figure  had  no  variety 
of  expression  —  she  herself  had  no  sense  of  variety. 
You  may  say  that  this  was  my  business,  was  only  a 
question  of  placing  her.  I  placed  her  in  every  con 
ceivable  position,  but  she  managed  to  obliterate  their 
differences.  She  was  always  a  lady  certainly,  and 
into  the  bargain  was  always  the  same  lady.  She  was 
the  real  thing,  but  always  the  same  thing.  There 
were  moments  when  I  was  oppressed  by  the  serenity 
of  her  confidence  that  she  was  the  real  thing.  All 
her  dealings  with  me  and  all  her  husband's  were  an 
implication  that  this  was  lucky  for  me.  Meanwhile  I 
found  myself  trying  to  invent  types  that  approached 
her  own,  instead  of  making  her  own  transform  itself 
—  in  the  clever  way  that  was  not  impossible,  for 
instance,  to  poor  Miss  Churm.  Arrange  as  I  would 
and  take  the  precautions  I  would,  she  always,  in 
my  pictures,  came  out  too  tall  —  landing  me  in  the 
dilemma  of  having  represented  a  fascinating  woman 


22  THE    REAL    THING. 

as  seven  feet  high,  which,  out  of  respect  perhaps  to 
my  own  very  much  scantier  inches,  was  far  from  my 
idea  of  such  a  personage. 

The  case  was  worse  with  the  Major  —  nothing  I 
could  do  would  keep  him  down,  so  that  he  became 
useful  only  for  the  representation  of  brawny  giants. 
I  adored  variety  and  range,  I  cherished  human 
accidents,  the  illustrative  note  ;  I  wanted  to  charac 
terise  closely,  and  the  thing  in  the  world  I  most 
hated  was  the  danger  of  being  ridden  by  a  type.  I 
had  quarrelled  with  some  of  my  friends  about  it  — 
I  had  parted  company  with  them  for  maintaining 
that  one  had  to  be,  and  that  if  the  type  was  beautiful 
(witness  Raphael  and  Leonardo),  the  servitude  was 
only  a  gain.  I  was  neither  Leonardo  nor  Raphael ; 
I  might  only  be  a  presumptuous  young  modern 
searcher,  but  I  held  that  everything  was  to  be  sacri 
ficed  sooner  than  character.  When  they  averred  that 
the  haunting  type  in  question  could  easily  be  char 
acter,  I  retorted,  perhaps  superficially:  "Whose?" 
It  couldn't  be  everybody's  —  it  might  end  in  being 
nobody's. 

After  I  had  drawn  Mrs.  Monarch  a  dozen  times  I 
perceived  more  clearly  than  before  that  the  value  of 
such  a  model  as  Miss  Churm  resided  precisely  in  the 
fact  that  she  had  no  positive  stamp,  combined  of 
course  with  the  other  fact  that  what  she  did  have 
was  a  curious  and  inexplicable  talent  for  imitation. 
Her  usual  appearance  was  like  a  curtain  which  she 
could  draw  up  at  request  for  a  capital  performance. 


THE    REAL    THING.  23 

This  performance  was  simply  suggestive ;  but  it  was 
a  word  to  the  wise  —  it  was  vivid  and  pretty.  Some 
times,  even,  I  thought  it,  though  she  was  plain 
herself,  too  insipidly  pretty ;  I  made  it  a  reproach  to 
her  that  the  figures  drawn  from  her  were  monoto 
nously  (bitement)  as  we  used  to  say)  graceful.  Noth 
ing  made  her  more  angry  :  it  was  so  much  her  pride 
to  feel  that  she  could  sit  for  characters  that  had 
nothing  in  common  with  each  other.  She  would 
accuse  me  at  such  moments  of  taking  away  her 
"  reputytion." 

It  suffered  a  certain  shrinkage,  this  queer  quantity, 
from  the  repeated  visits  of  my  new  friends.  Miss 
Churm  was  greatly  in  demand,  never  in  want  of 
employment,  so  I  had  no  scruple  in  putting  her  off 
occasionally,  to  try  them  more  at  my  ease.  It  was 
certainly  amusing  at  first  to  do  the  real  thing  —  it 
was  amusing  to  do  Major  Monarch's  trousers.  They 
were  the  real  thing,  even  if  he  did  come  out  colossal. 
It  was  amusing  to  do  his  wife's  back  hair  (it  was  so 
mathematically  neat,)  and  the  particular  "smart" 
tension  of  her  tight  stays.  She  lent  herself  especially 
to  positions  in  which  the  face  was  somewhat  averted 
or  blurred ;  she  abounded  in  lady-like  back  views 
and  profits  per dus.  When  she  stood  erect  she  took 
naturally  one  of  the  attitudes  in  which  court-painters 
represent  queens  and  princesses ;  so  that  I  found 
myself  wondering  whether,  to  draw  out  this  accom 
plishment,  I  couldn't  get  the  editor  of  the  CJieapside 
to  publish  a  really  royal  romance,  "  A  Tale  of  Buck- 


24  THE    REAL    THING. 

ingham  Palace."  Sometimes,  however,  the  real 
thing  and  the  make-believe  came  into  contact ;  by 
which  I  mean  that  Miss  Churm,  keeping  an  appoint 
ment  or  coming  to  make  one  on  days  when  I  had 
much  work  in  hand,  encountered  her  invidious  rivals. 
The  encounter  was  not  on  their  part,  for  they  noticed 
her  no  more  than  if  she  had  been  the  housemaid ; 
not  from  intentional  loftiness,  but  simply  because,  as 
yet,  professionally,  they  didn't  know  how  to  fraternise, 
as  I  could  guess  that  they  would  have  liked  —  or 
at  least  that  the  Major  would.  They  couldn't  talk 
about  the  omnibus  —  they  always  walked ;  and  they 
didn't  know  what  else  to  try — she  wasn't  interested 
in  good  trains  or  cheap  claret.  Besides,  they  must 
have  felt  —  in  the  air  —  that  she  was  amused  at 
them,  secretly  derisive  of  their  ever  knowing  how. 
She  was  not  a  person  to  conceal  her  scepticism  if  she 
had  had  a  chance  to  show  it.  On  the  other  hand  Mrs. 
Monarch  didn't  think  her  tidy ;  for  why  else  did  she 
take  pains  to  say  to  me  (it  was  going  out  of  the  way, 
for  Mrs.  Monarch),  that  she  didn't  like  dirty  women  ? 
One  day  when  my  young  lady  happened  to  be 
present  with  my  other  sitters  (she  even  dropped  in, 
when  it  was  convenient,  for  a  chat),  I  asked  her  to  be 
so  good  as  to  lend  a  hand  in  getting  tea  —  a  service 
with  which  she  was  familiar  and  which  was  one  of  a 
class  that,  living  as  I  did  in  a  small  way,  with  slender 
domestic  resources,  I  often  appealed  to  my  models  to 
render.  They  liked  to  lay  hands  on  my  property,  to 
break  the  sitting,  and  sometimes  the  china — I  made 


THE    REAL    THING.  25 

them  feel  Bohemian.  The  next  time  I  saw  Miss 
Churm  after  this  incident  she  surprised  me  greatly 
by  making  a  scene  about  it  —  she  accused  me  of 
having  wished  to  humiliate  her.  She  had  not  resented 
the  outrage  at  the  time,  but  had  seemed  obliging  and 
amused,  enjoying  the  comedy  of  asking  Mrs.  Mon 
arch,  who  sat  vague  and  silent,  whether  she  would 
have  cream  and  sugar,  and  putting  an  exaggerated 
simper  into  the  question.  She  had  tried  intonations 
—  as  if  she  too  wished  to  pass  for  the  real  thing ;  till 
I  was  afraid  my  other  visitors  would  take  offence. 

Oh,  they  were  determined  not  to  do  this ;  and  their 
touching  patience  was  the  measure  of  their  great 
need.  They  would  sit  by  the  hour,  uncomplaining, 
till  I  was  ready  to  use  them ;  they  would  come  back 
on  the  chance  of  being  wanted  and  would  walk  away 
cheerfully  if  they  were  not.  I  used  to  go  to  the  door 
with  them  to  see  in  what  magnificent  order  they 
retreated.  I  tried  to  find  other  employment  for 
them  —  I  introduced  them  to  several  artists.  But 
they  didn't  "take,"  for  reasons  I  could  appreciate, 
and  I  became  conscious,  rather  anxiously,  that  after 
such  disappointments  they  fell  back  upon  me  with  a 
heavier  weight.  They  did  me  the  honour  to  think 
that  it  was  I  who  was  most  their  form.  They  were 
not  picturesque  enough  for  the  painters,  and  in  those 
days  there  were  not  so  many  serious  workers  in  black 
and  white.  Besides,  they  had  an  eye  to  the  great 
job  I  had  mentioned  to  them  —  they  had  secretly  set 
their  hearts  on  supplying  the  right  essence  for  my 


26  THE    REAL    THING. 

pictorial  vindication  of  our  fine  novelist.  They  knew 
that  for  this  undertaking  I  should  want  no  costume- 
effects,  none  of  the  frippery  of  past  ages  —  that  it 
was  a  case  in  which  everything  would  be  contem 
porary  and  satirical  and,  presumably,  genteel.  If 
I  could  work  them  into  it  their  future  would  be 
assured,  for  the  labour  would  of  course  be  long  and 
the  occupation  steady. 

One  day  Mrs.  Monarch  came  without  her  husband 
—  she  explained  his  absence  by  his  having  had  to  go 
to  the  City.  While  she  sat  there  in  her  usual  anxious 
stiffness  there  came,  at  the  door,  a  knock  which  I 
immediately  recognised  as  the  subdued  appeal  of  a 
model  out  of  work.  It  was  followed  by  the  entrance 
of  a  young  man  whom  I  easily  perceived  to  be  a 
foreigner  and  who  proved  in  fact  an  Italian  ac 
quainted  with  no  English  word  but  my  name,  which 
he  uttered  in  a  way  that  made  it  seem  to  include  all 
others.  I  had  not  then  visited  his  country,  nor  was  I 
proficient  in  his  tongue ;  but  as  he  was  not  so  meanly 
constituted  —  what  Italian  is?  —  as  to  depend  only 
on  that  member  for  expression  he  conveyed  to  me,  in 
familiar  but  graceful  mimicry,  that  he  was  in  search 
of  exactly  the  employment  in  which  the  lady  before 
me  was  engaged.  I  was  not  struck  with  him  at  first, 
and  while  I  continued  to  draw  I  emitted  rough 
sounds  of  discouragement  and  dismissal.  He  stood 
his  ground,  however,  not  importunately,  but  with  a 
dumb,  dog-like  fidelity  in  his  eyes  which  amounted  to 
innocent  impudence  —  the  manner  of  a  devoted  ser- 


THE    REAL    THING.  2/ 

vant  (he  might  have  been  in  the  house  for  years), 
unjustly  suspected.  Suddenly  I  saw  that  this  very 
attitude  and  expression  made  a  picture,  whereupon  I 
told  him  to  sit  down  and  wait  till  I  should  be  free. 
There  was  another  picture  in  the  way  he  obeyed  me, 
and  I  observed  as  I  worked  that  there  were  others 
still  in  the  way  he  looked  wonderingly,  with  his 
head  thrown  back,  about  the  high  studio.  He  might 
have  been  crossing  himself  in  St.  Peter's.  Before  I 
finished  I  said  to  myself :  "  The  fellow's  a  bankrupt 
orange-monger,  but  he's  a  treasure." 

When  Mrs.  Monarch  withdrew  he  passed  across 
the  room  like  a  flash  to  open  the  door  for  her,  stand 
ing  there  with  the  rapt,  pure  gaze  of  the  young 
Dante  spellbound  by  the  young  Beatrice.  As  I 
never  insisted,  in  such  situations,  on  the  blankness  of 
the  British  domestic,  I  reflected  that  he  had  the 
making  of  a  servant  (and  I  needed  one,  but  couldn't 
pay  him  to  be  only  that),  as  well  as  of  a  model;  in 
short  I  made  up  my  mind  to  adopt  my  bright  adven 
turer  if  he  would  agree  to  officiate  in  the  double 
capacity.  He  jumped  at  my  offer,  and  in  the  event 
my  rashness  (for  I  had  known  nothing  about  him), 
was  not  brought  home  to  me.  He  proved  a  sympa 
thetic  though  a  desultory  ministrant,  and  had  in  a 
wonderful  degree  the  sentiment  de  la  pose.  It  was 
uncultivated,  instinctive ;  a  part  of  the  happy  instinct 
which  had  guided  him  to  my  door  and  helped  him  to 
spell  out  my  name  on  the  card  nailed  to  it.  He  had 
had  no  other  introduction  to  me  than  a  guess,  from 


28  THE    REAL    THING. 

the  shape  of  my  high  north  window,  seen  outside, 
that  my  place  was  a  studio  and  that  as  a  studio  it 
would  contain  an  artist.  He  had  wandered  to  Eng 
land  in  search  of  fortune,  like  other  itinerants,  and 
had  embarked,  with  a  partner  and  a  small  green  hand 
cart,  on  the  sale  of  penny  ices.  The  ices  had  melted 
away  and  the  partner  had  dissolved  in  their  train. 
My  young  man  wore  tight  yellow  trousers  with 
reddish  stripes  and  his  name  was  Oronte.  He  was 
sallow  but  fair,  and  when  I  put  him  into  some  old 
clothes  of  my  own  he  looked  like  an  Englishman.  He 
was  as  good  as  Miss  Churm,  who  could  look,  when 
required,  like  an  Italian. 


IV. 


I  THOUGHT  Mrs.  Monarch's  face  slightly  convulsed 
when,  on  her  coming  back  with  her  husband,  she 
found  Oronte  installed.  It  was  strange  to  have  to 
recognise  in  a  scrap  of  a  lazzarone  a  competitor  to 
her  magnificent  Major.  It  was  she  who  scented 
clanger  first,  for  the  Major  was  anecdotically  uncon 
scious.  But  Oronte  gave  us  tea,  with  a  hundred 
eager  confusions  (he  had  never  seen  such  a  queer 
process),  and  I  think  she  thought  better  of  me  for 
having  at  last  an  "establishment."  They  saw  a 
couple  of  drawings  that  I  had  made  of  the  establish 
ment,  and  Mrs.  Monarch  hinted  that  it  never  would 
have  struck  her  that  he  had  sat  for  them.  "  Now 


THE    REAL    THING.  2Q 

the  drawings  you  make  from  us,  they  look  exactly 
like  us,"  she  reminded  me,  smiling  in  triumph ;  and 
I  recognised  that  this  was  indeed  just  their  defect. 
When  I  drew  the  Monarchs  I  couldn't,  somehow,  get 
away  from  them  —  get  into  the  character  I  wanted  to 
represent ;  and  I  had  not  the  least  desire  my  model 
should  be  discoverable  in  my  picture.  Miss  Churm 
never  was,  and  Mrs.  Monarch  thought  I  hid  her, 
very  properly,  because  she  was  vulgar ;  whereas  if 
she  was  lost  it  was  only  as  the  dead  who  go  to  heaven 
are  lost  —  in  the  gain  of  an  angel  the  more. 

By  this  time  I  had  got  a  certain  start  with  "  Rut 
land  Ramsay,"  the  first  novel  in  the  great  projected 
series ;  that  is  I  had  produced  a  dozen  drawings,  sev 
eral  with  the  help  of  the  Major  and  his  wife,  and  I 
had  sent  them  in  for  approval.  My  understanding 
with  the  publishers,  as  I  have  already  hinted,  had 
been  that  I  was  to  be  left  to  do  my  work,  in  this 
particular  case,  as  I  liked,  with  the  whole  book  com 
mitted  to  me ;  but  my  connection  with  the  rest  of  the 
series  was  only  contingent.  There  were  moments 
when,  frankly,  it  was  a  comfort  to  have  the  real 
thing  under  one's  hand ;  for  there  were  characters 
in  "  Rutland  Ramsay  "  that  were  very  much  like  it. 
There  were  people  presumably  as  straight  as  the 
Major  and  women  of  as  good  a  fashion  as  Mrs.  Mon 
arch.  There  was  a  great  deal  of  country-house  life 
—  treated,  it  is  true,  in  a  fine,  fanciful,  ironical,  gen 
eralised  way  —  and  there  was  a  considerable  implica 
tion  of  knickerbockers  and  kilts.  There  were  certain 


3O  THE    REAL    THING. 

things  I  had  to  settle  at  the  outset ;  such  things  for 
instance  as  the  exact  appearance  of  the  hero,  the 
particular  bloom  of  the  heroine.  The  author  of 
course  gave  me  a  lead,  but  there  was  a  margin  for 
interpretation.  I  took  the  Monarchs  into  my  confi 
dence,  I  told  them  frankly  what  I  was  about,  I  men 
tioned  my  embarrassments  and  alternatives.  "  Oh, 
take  him!"  Mrs.  Monarch  murmured  sweetly,  look 
ing  at  her  husband ;  and  "  What  could  you  want 
better  than  my  wife  ?  "  the  Major  inquired,  with  the 
comfortable  candour  that  now  prevailed  between  us. 

I  was  not  obliged  to  answer  these  remarks  —  I  was 
only  obliged  to  place  my  sitters.  I  was  not  easy  in 
mind,  and  I  postponed,  a  little  timidly  perhaps,  the 
solution  of  the  question.  The  book  was  a  large  can 
vas,  the  other  figures  were  numerous,  and  I  worked 
off  at  first  some  of  the  episodes  in  which  the  hero 
and  the  heroine  were  not  concerned.  When  once  I 
had  set  them  up  I  should  have  to  stick  to  them  —  I 
couldn't  make  my  young  man  seven  feet  high  in  one 
place  and  five  feet  nine  in  another.  I  inclined  on  the 
whole  to  the  latter  measurement,  though  the  Major 
more  than  once  reminded  me  that  he  looked  about  as 
young  as  anyone.  It  was  indeed  quite  possible  to 
arrange  him,  for  the  figure,  so  that  it  would  have 
been  difficult  to  detect  his  age.  After  the  spontane 
ous  Oronte  had  been  with  me  a  month,  and  after  I 
had  given  him  to  understand  several  different  times 
that  his  native  exuberance  would  presently  constitute 
an  insurmountable  barrier  to  our  further  intercourse, 


THE    REAL    THING.  31 

I  waked  to  a  sense  of  his  heroic  capacity.  He  was 
only  five  feet  seven,  but  the  remaining  inches  were 
latent.  I  tried  him  almost  secretly  at  first,  for  I 
was  really  rather  afraid  of  the  judgment  my  other 
models  would  pass  on  such  a  choice.  If  they  re 
garded  Miss  Churm  as  little  better  than  a  snare, 
what  would  they  think  of  the  representation  by  a 
person  so  little  the  real  thing  as  an  Italian  street- 
vendor  of  a  protagonist  formed  by  a  public  school  ? 

If  I  went  a  little  in  fear  of  them  it  was  not  because 
they  bullied  me,  because  they  had  got  an  oppressive 
foothold,  but  because  in  their  really  pathetic  decorum 
and  mysteriously  permanent  newness  they  counted 
on  me  so  intensely.  I  was  therefore  very  glad  when 
Jack  Hawley  came  home  :  he  was  always  of  such 
good  counsel.  He  painted  badly  himself,  but  there 
was  no  one  like  him  for  putting  his  finger  on  the 
place.  He  had  been  absent  from  England  for  a 
year ;  he  had  been  somewhere  —  I  don't  remember 
where  —  to  get  a  fresh  eye.  I  was  in  a  good  deal  of 
dread  of  any  such  organ,  but  we  were  old  friends  ; 
he  had  been  away  for  months  and  a  sense  of  empti 
ness  was  creeping  into  my  life.  I  hadn't  dodged  a 
missile  for  a  year. 

He  came  back  with  a  fresh  eye,  but  with  the  same 
old  black  velvet  blouse,  and  the  first  evening  he  spent 
in  my  studio  we  smoked  cigarettes  till  the  small 
hours.  He  had  done  no  work  himself,  he  had  only 
got  the  eye ;  so  the  field  was  clear  for  the  production 
of  my  little  things.  He  wanted  to  see  what  I  had 


32  THE    REAL    THING. 

done  for  the  Cheapsidet  but  he  was  disappointed  in 
the  exhibition.  That  at  least  seemed  the  meaning 
of  two  or  three  comprehensive  groans  which,  as  he 
lounged  on  my  big  divan,  on  a  folded  leg,  looking  at 
my  latest  drawings,  issued  from  his  lips  with  the 
smoke  of  the  cigarette. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  you  ?  "  I  asked. 

"  What's  the  matter  with  you  ?  " 

"  Nothing  save  that  I'm  mystified." 

"  You  are  indeed.  You're  quite  off  the  hinge. 
What's  the  meaning  of  this  new  fad  ? "  And  he 
tossed  me,  with  visible  irreverence,  a  drawing  in 
which  I  happened  to  have  depicted  both  my  majestic 
models.  I  asked  if  he  didn't  think  it  good,  and  he 
replied  that  it  struck  him  as  execrable,  given  the  sort 
of  thing  I  had  always  represented  myself  to  him  as 
wishing  to  arrive  at ;  but  I  let  that  pass,  I  was  so 
anxious  to  see  exactly  what  he  meant.  The  two 
figures  in  the  picture  looked  colossal,  but  I  supposed 
this  was  not  what  he  meant,  inasmuch  as,  for  aught 
he  knew  to  the  contrary,  I  might  have  been  trying 
for  that.  I  maintained  that  I  was  working  exactly 
in  the  same  way  as  when  he  last  had  done  me  the 
honour  to  commend  me.  "  Well,  there's  a  big  hole 
somewhere,"  he  answered;  "wait  a  bit  and  I'll  dis 
cover  it."  I  depended  upon  him  to  do  so  :  where 
else  was  the  fresh  eye  ?  But  he  produced  at  last 
nothing  more  luminous  than  "  I  don't  know  —  I  don't 
like  your  types."  This  was  lame,  for  a  critic  who 
had  never  consented  to  discuss  with  me  anything  but 


THE    REAL    THING.  33 

the  question  of  execution,  the  direction  of  strokes  and 
the  mystery  of  values. 

"  In  the  drawings  you've  been  looking  at  I  think 
my  types  are  very  handsome." 

"Oh,  they  won't  do!  " 

"  I've  had  a  couple  of  new  models." 

"  I  see  you  have.      They  won't  do." 

"  Are  you  very  sure  of  that  ?  " 

"  Absolutely —  they're  stupid." 

"  You  mean  /  am  —  for  I  ought  to  get  round  that." 

"  You  cant  —  with  such  people.     Who  are  they  ?  " 

I  told  him,  as  far  as  was  necessary,  and  he  de 
clared,  heartlessly :  "  Ce  sont  ties  gens  qn'il  faut 
mettre  a  la  port e" 

"  You've  never  seen  them  ;  they're  awfully  good," 
I  compassionately  objected. 

"  Not  seen  them  ?  Why,  all  this  recent  work  of 
yours  drops  to  pieces  with  them.  It's  all  I  want  to 
see  of  them." 

"  No  one  else  has  said  anything  against  it  —  the 
Cheapside  people  are  pleased." 

"  Everyone  else  is  an  ass,  and  the  Cheapside  people 
the  biggest  asses  of  all.  Come,  don't  pretend,  at  this 
time  of  day,  to  have  pretty  illusions  about  the  public, 
especially  about  publishers  and  editors.  It's  not  for 
stick  animals  you  work  —  it's  for  those  who  know, 
coloro  die  sanno  ;  so  keep  straight  for  me  if  you  can't 
keep  straight  for  yourself.  There's  a  certain  sort 
of  thing  you  tried  for  from  the  first  —  and  a  very 
good  thing  it  is.  But  this  twaddle  isn't  /;/  it."  When 


34  '-THE    REAL    THING. 

I  talked  with  Hawley  later  about  "  Rutland  Ramsay  " 
and  its  possible  successors  he  declared  that  I  must 
get  back  into  my  boat  again  or  I  would  go  to  the 
bottom.  His  voice  in  short  was  the  voice  of  warning. 
I  noted  the  warning,  but  I  didn't  turn  my  friends 
out  of  doors.  They  bored  me  a  good  deal ;  but  the 
very  fact  that  they  bored  me  admonished  me  not  to 
sacrifice  them  —  if  there  was  anything  to  be  done 
with  them  —  simply  to  irritation.  As  I  look  back  at 
this  phase  they  seem  to  me  to  have  pervaded  my  life 
not  a  little.  I  have  a  vision  of  them  as  most  of  the 
time  in  my  studio,  seated,  against  the  wall,  on  an  old 
velvet  bench  to  be  out  of  the  way,  and  looking  like 
a  pair  of  patient  courtiers  in  a  royal  ante-chamber. 
I  am  convinced  that  during  the  coldest  weeks  of  the 
winter  they  held  their  ground  because  it  saved  them 
fire.  Their  newness  was  losing  its  gloss,  and  it  was 
impossible  not  to  feel  that  they  were  objects  of 
charity.  Whenever  Miss  Churm  arrived  they  went 
away,  and  after  I  was  fairly  launched  in  "  Rutland 
Ramsay  "  Miss  Churm  arrived  pretty  often.  They 
managed  to  express  to  me  tacitly  that  they  supposed 
I  wanted  her  for  the  low  life  of  the  book,  and  I  let 
them  suppose  it,  since  they  had  attempted  to  study 
the  work  —  it  was  lying  about  the  studio  —  without 
discovering  that  it  dealt  only  with  the  highest  circles. 
They  had  dipped  into  the  most  brilliant  of  our  novel 
ists  without  deciphering  many  passages.  I  still  took 
an  hour  from  them,  now  and  again,  in  spite  of  Jack 
Hawley 's  warning :  it  would  be  time  enough  to  dis- 


THE    REAL    THING.  35 

miss  them,  if  dismissal  should  be  necessary,  when  the 
rigour  of  the  season  was  over.  Hawley  had  made 
their  acquaintance  —  he  had  met  them  at  my  fireside 
—  and  thought  them  a  ridiculous  pair.  Learning  that 
he  was  a  painter  they  tried  to  approach  him,  to  show 
him  too  that  they  were  the  real  thing;  but  he  looked 
at  them,  across  the  big  room,  as  if  they  were  miles 
away :  they  were  a  compendium  of  everything  that 
he  most  objected  to  in  the  social  system  of  his  country. 
Such  people  as  that,  all  convention  and  patent-leather, 
with  ejaculations  that  stopped  conversation,  had  no 
business  in  a  studio.  A  studio  was  a  place  to  learn  to 
see,  and  how  could  you  see  through  a  pair  of  feather 
beds  ? 

The  main  inconvenience  I  suffered  at  their  hands 
was  that,  at  first,  I  was  shy  of  letting  them  discover 
how  my  artful  little  servant  had  begun  to  sit  to  me  for 
"Rutland  Ramsay."  They  knew  that  I  had  been 
odd  enough  (they  were  prepared  by  this  time  to 
allow  oddity  to  artists,)  to  pick  a  foreign  vagabond 
out  of  the  streets,  when  I  might  have  had  a  person 
with  whiskers  and  credentials  ;  but  it  was  some  time 
before  they  learned  how  high  I  rated  his  accomplish 
ments.  They  found  him  in  an  attitude  more  than 
once,  but  they  never  doubted  I  was  doing  him  as  an 
organ-grinder.  There  were  several  things  they  never 
guessed,  and  one  of  them  was  that  for  a  striking 
scene  in  the  novel,  in  which  a  footman  briefly  figured, 
it  occurred  to  me  to  make  use  of  Major  Monarch  as 
the  menial.  I  kept  putting  this  off,  I  didn't  like  to 


36  THE    REAL    THING. 

ask  him  to  don  the  livery  —  besides  the  difficulty  of 
finding  a  livery  to  fit  him.  At  last,  one  day  late  in  the 
winter,  when  I  was  at  work  on  the  despised  Oronte 
(he  caught  one's  idea  in  an  instant),  and  was  in  the 
glow  of  feeling  that  I  was  going  very  straight,  they 
came  in,  the  Major  and  his  wife,  with  their  society 
laugh  about  nothing  (there  was  less  and  less  to  laugh 
at),  like  country-callers  —  they  always  reminded  me 
of  that  —  who  have  walked  across  the  park  after 
church  and  are  presently  persuaded  to  stay  to  lunch 
eon.  Luncheon  was  over,  but  they  could  stay  to  tea 
—  I  knew  they  wanted  it.  The  fit  was  on  me,  how 
ever,  and  I  couldn't  let  my  ardour  cool  and  my  work 
wait,  with  the  fading  daylight,  while  my  model  pre 
pared  it.  So  I  asked  Mrs.  Monarch  if  she  would 
mind  laying  it  out  —  a  request  which,  for  an  instant, 
brought  all  the  blood  to  her  face.  Her  eyes  were  on 
her  husband's  for  a  second,  and  some  mute  telegraphy 
passed  between  them.  Their  folly  was  over  the  next 
instant ;  his  cheerful  shrewdness  put  an  end  to  it. 
So  far  from  pitying  their  wounded  pride,  I  must  add, 
I  was  moved  to  give  it  as  complete  a  lesson  as  I  could. 
They  bustled  about  together  and  got  out  the  cups 
and  saucers  and  made  the  kettle  boil.  I  know  they 
felt  as  if  they  were  waiting  on  my  servant,  and  when 
the  tea  was  prepared  I  said :  "  He'll  have  a  cup, 
please  —  he's  tired."  Mrs.  Monarch  brought  him  one 
where  he  stood,  and  he  took  it  from  her  as  if  he  had 
been  a  gentleman  at  a  party,  squeezing  a  crush-hat 
with  an  elbow. 


THE    REAL    THING.  3/ 

Then  it  came  over  me  that  she  had  made  a  great 
effort  for  me  —  made  it  with  a  kind  of  nobleness  — 
and  that  I  owed  her  a  compensation.  Each  time  I 
saw  her  after  this  I  wondered  what  the  compensation 
could  be.  I  couldn't  go  on  doing  the  wrong  thing 
to  oblige  them.  Oh,  it  was  the  wrong  thing,  the 
stamp  of  the  work  for  which  they  sat —  Hawley  was 
not  the  only  person  to  say  it  now.  I  sent  in  a  large 
number  of  the  drawings  I  had  made  for  "  Rutland 
Ramsay,"  and  I  received  a  warning  that  was  more  to 
the  point  than  Hawley's.  The  artistic  adviser  of  the 
house  for  which  I  was  working  was  of  opinion  that 
many  of  my  illustrations  were  not  what  had  been 
looked  for.  Most  of  these  illustrations  were  the  sub 
jects  in  which  the  Monarchs  had  figured.  Without 
going  into  the  question  of  what  had  been  looked  for, 
I  saw  at  this  rate  I  shouldn't  get  the  other  books 
to  do.  I  hurled  myself  in  despair  upon  Miss  Churm, 
I  put  her  through  all  her  paces.  I  not  only  adopted 
Oronte  publicly  as  my  hero,  but  one  morning  when 
the  Major  looked  in  to  see  if  I  didn't  require  him  to 
finish  a  figure  for  the  Cheapside,  for  which  he  had 
begun  to  sit  the  week  before,  I  told  him  that  I  had 
changed  my  mind  —  I  would  do  the  drawing  from  my 
man.  At  this  my  visitor  turned  pale  and  stood  look 
ing  at  me.  "  Is  he  your  idea  of  an  English  gentle 
man  ? "  he  asked. 

I  was  disappointed,  I  was  nervous,  I  wanted  to  get 
on  with  my  work  ;  so  I  replied  with  irritation  :  "  Oh, 
my  dear  Major —  I  can't  be  ruined  for  you  !  " 


38  THE    REAL    THING. 

He  stood  another  moment ;  then,  without  a  word, 
he  quitted  the  studio.  I  drew  a  long  breath  when  he 
was  gone,  for  I  said  to  myself  that  I  shouldn't  see 
him  again.  I  had  not  told  him  definitely  that  I 
was  in  danger  of  having  my  work  rejected,  but  I  was 
vexed  at  his  not  having  felt  the  catastrophe  in  the 
air,  read  with  me  the  moral  of  our  fruitless  collabora 
tion,  the  lesson  that,  in  the  deceptive  atmosphere  of 
art,  even  the  highest  respectability  may  fail  of  being 
plastic. 

I  didn't  owe  my  friends  money,  but  I  did  see  them 
again.  They  re-appeared  together,  three  days  later, 
and  under  the  circumstances  there  was  something 
tragic  in  the  fact.  It  was  a  proof  to  me  that  they 
could  find  nothing  else  in  life  to  do.  They  had 
threshed  the  matter  out  in  a  dismal  conference  —  they 
had  digested  the  bad  news  that  they  were  not  in  for 
the  series.  If  they  were  not  useful  to  me  even  for 
the  Cheapside  their  function  seemed  difficult  to  de 
termine,  and  I  could  only  judge  at  first  that  they 
had  come,  forgivingly,  decorously,  to  take  a  last  leave. 
This  made  me  rejoice  in  secret  that  I  had  little  leisure 
for  a  scene ;  for  I  had  placed  both  my  other  models 
in  position  together  and  I  was  pegging  away  at  a 
drawing  from  which  I  hoped  to  derive  glory.  It  had 
been  suggested  by  the  passage  in  which  Rutland 
Ramsay,  drawing  up  a  chair  to  Artemisia's  piano- 
stool,  says  extraordinary  things  to  her  while  she  os 
tensibly  fingers  out  a  difficult  piece  of  music.  I  had 
done  Miss  Churm  at  the  piano  before  —  it  was  an 


THE    REAL    THING.  39 

attitude  in  which  she  knew  how  to  take  on  an  abso 
lutely  poetic  grace.  I  wished  the  two  figures  to 
"  compose  "  together,  intensely,  and  my  little  Italian 
had  entered  perfectly  into  my  conception.  The  pair 
were  vividly  before  me,  the  piano  had  been  pulled 
out ;  it  was  a  charming  picture  of  blended  youth  and 
murmured  love,  which  I  had  only  to  catch  and  keep. 
My  visitors  stood  and  looked  at  it,  and  I  was  friendly 
to  them  over  my  shoulder. 

They  made  no  response,  but  I  was  used  to  silent 
company  and  went  on  with  my  work,  only  a  little 
disconcerted  (even  though  exhilarated  by  the  sense 
that  this  was  at  least  the  ideal  thing),  at  not  having 
got  rid  of  them  after  all.  Presently  I  heard  Mrs. 
Monarch's  sweet  voice  beside,  or  rather  above  me : 
"  I  wish  her  hair  was  a  little  better  done."  I  looked 
up  and  she  was  staring  with  a  strange  fixedness  at 
Miss  Churm,  whose  back  was  turned  to  her.  "  Do 
you  mind  my  just  touching  it?"  she  went  on  —  a 
question  which  made  me  spring  up  for  an  instant,  as 
with  the  instinctive  fear  that  she  might  do  the  young 
lady  a  harm.  But  she  quieted  me  with  a  glance  I 
shall  never  forget  —  I  confess  I  should  like  to  have 
been  able  to  paint  that —  and  went  for  a  moment  to 
my  model.  She  spoke  to  her  softly,  laying  a  hand 
upon  her  shoulder  and  bending  over  her ;  and  as  the 
girl,  understanding,  gratefully  assented,  she  disposed 
her  rough  curls,  with  a  few  quick  passes,  in  such  a 
way  as  to  make  Miss  Churm's  head  twice  as  charm 
ing.  It  was  one  of  the  most  heroic  personal  services 


4<D  THE    REAL    THING. 

I  have  ever  seen  rendered.  Then  Mrs.  Monarch 
turned  away  with  a  low  sigh  and,  looking  about  her 
as  if  for  something  to  do,  stooped  to  the  floor  with  a 
noble  humility  and  picked  up  a  dirty  rag  that  had 
dropped  out  of  my  paint-box. 

The  Major  meanwhile  had  also  been  looking  for 
something  to  do  and,  wandering  to  the  other  end  of 
the  studio,  saw  before  him  my  breakfast  things,  neg 
lected,  unremoved.  "I  say,  can't  I  be  useful  here?" 
he  called  out  to  me  with  an  irrepressible  quaver.  I 
assented  with  a  laugh  that  I  fear  was  awkward  and 
for  the  next  ten  minutes,  while  I  worked,  I  heard  the 
light  clatter  of  china  and  the  tinkle  of  spoons  and 
glass.  Mrs.  Monarch  assisted  her  husband  —  they 
washed  up  my  crockery,  they  put  it  away.  They 
wandered  off  into  my  little  scullery,  and  I  afterwards 
found  that  they  had  cleaned  my  knives  and  that  my 
slender  stock  of  plate  had  an  unprecedented  surface. 
When  it  came  over  me,  the  latent  eloquence  of  what 
they  were  doing,  I  confess  that  my  drawing  was 
blurred  for  a  moment  —  the  picture  swam.  They 
had  accepted  their  failure,  but  they  couldn't  accept 
their  fate.  They  had  bowed  their  heads  in  bewilder 
ment  to  the  perverse  and  cruel  law  in  virtue  of  which 
the  real  thing  could  be  so  much  less  precious  than 
the  unreal ;  but  they  didn't  want  to  starve*  If  my 
servants  were  my  models,  my  models  might  be  my 
servants.  They  would  reverse  the  parts  —  the  others 
would  sit  for  the  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and  they 
would  do  the  work.  They  would  still  be  in  the 


THE    REAL    THING.  4 1 

studio  —  it  was  an  intense  dumb  appeal  to  me  not  to 
turn  them  out.  "  Take  us  on,"  they  wanted  to  say 
—  "  we'll  do  anything." 

When  all  this  hung  before  me  the  afflatus  vanished 
—  my  pencil  dropped  from  my  hand.  My  sitting 
was  spoiled  and  I  got  rid  of  my  sitters,  who  were  also 
evidently  rather  mystified  and  awestruck.  Then, 
alone  with  the  Major  and  his  wife,  I  had  a  most 
uncomfortable  moment.  He  put  their  prayer  into  a 
single  sentence:  "I  say,  you  know  —  just  let  us  do 
for  you,  can't  you?"  I  couldn't  —  it  was  dreadful 
to  see  them  emptying  my  slops ;  but  I  pretended  I 
could,  to  oblige  them,  for  about  a  week.  Then  I 
gave  them  a  sum  of  money  to  go  away ;  and  I  never 
saw  them  again.  I  obtained  the  remaining  books, 
but  my  friend  Hawley  repeats  that  Major  and  Mrs. 
Monarch  did  me  a  permanent  harm,  got  me  into  a 
second-rate  trick.  If  it  be  true  I  am  content  to  have 
paid  the  price  —  for  the  memory. 

?(  tk-  &* 


SIR  DOMINICK   FERRAND. 


SIR   DOMINICK   FERRAND. 


I. 


"  THERE  are  several  objections  to  it,  but  I'll  take  it 
if  you'll  alter  it,"  Mr.  Locket's  rather  curt  note  had 
said ;  and  there  was  no  waste  of  words  in  the  post 
script  in  which  he  had  added  :  "  If  you'll  come  in  and 
see  me,  I'll  show  you  what  I  mean."  This  communi 
cation  had  reached  Jersey  Villas  by  the  first  post, 
and  Peter  Baron  had  scarcely  swallowed  his  leathery 
muffin  before  he  got  into  motion  to  obey  the  editorial 
behest.  He  knew  that  such  precipitation  looked 
eager,  and  he  had  no  desire  to  look  eager  —  it  was 
not  in  his  interest ;  but  how  could  he  maintain  a  god 
like  calm,  principled  though  he  was  in  favour  of  it,  the 
first  time  one  of  the  great  magazines  had  accepted, 
even  with  a  cruel  reservation,  a  specimen  of  his 
ardent  young  genius  ? 

It  was  not  till,  like  a  child  with  a  sea-shell  at  his 
ear,  he  began  to  be  aware  of  the  great  roar  of  the 
"  underground,"  that,  in  his  third-class  carriage,  the 
cruelty  of  the  reservation  penetrated,  with  the  taste 
of  acrid  smoke,  to  his  inner  sense.  It  was  really 

45 


46  SIR   DOMINICK   FERRAND. 

degrading  to  be  eager  in  the  face  of  having  to  "alter." 
Peter  Baron  tried  to  figure  to  himself  at  that  moment 
that  he  was  not  flying  to  betray  the  extremity  of  his 
need,  but  hurrying  to  fight  for  some  of  those  passages 
of  superior  boldness  which  were  exactly  what  the 
conductor  of  the  "  Promiscuous  Review "  would  be 
sure  to  be  down  upon.  He  made  believe — as  if  to 
the  greasy  fellow-passenger  opposite  —  that  he  felt 
indignant ;  but  he  saw  that  to  the  small  round  eye 
of  this  still  more  downtrodden  brother  he  represented 
selfish  success.  He  would  have  liked  to  linger  in  the 
conception  that  he  had  been  "  approached  "  by  the 
Promiscuous ;  but  whatever  might  be  thought  in 
the  office  of  that  periodical  of  some  of  his  flights  of 
fancy,  there  was  no  want  of  vividness  in  his  occa 
sional  suspicion  that  he  passed  there  for  a  familiar 
bore.  The  only  thing  that  was  clearly  flattering  was 
the  fact  that  the  Promiscuous  rarely  published  fiction. 
He  should  therefore  be  associated  with  a  deviation 
from  a  solemn  habit,  and  that  would  more  than  make 
up  to  him  for  a  phrase  in  one  of  Mr.  Locket's  inexor 
able  earlier  notes,  a  phrase  which  still  rankled,  about 
his  showing  no  symptom  of  the  faculty  really  creative. 
"  You  don't  seem  able  to  keep  a  character  together," 
this  pitiless  monitor  had  somewhere  else  remarked. 
Peter  Baron,  as  he  sat  in  his  corner  while  the  train 
stopped,  considered,  in  the  befogged  gaslight,  the 
bookstall  standard  of  literature  and  asked  himself 
whose  character  had  fallen  to  pieces  now.  Tor 
menting  indeed  had  always  seemed  to  him  such  a 


SIR   DOMIN1CK   FERRAND. 


47 


fate  as  to  have  the  creative  head  without  the  creative 
hand. 

It  should  be  mentioned,  however,  that  before  he 
started  on  his  mission  to  Mr.  Locket  his  attention 
had  been  briefly  engaged  by  an  incident  occurring 
at  Jersey  Villas.  On  leaving  the  house  (he  lived  at 
No.  3,  the  door  of  which  stood  open  to  a  small  front 
garden),  he  encountered  the  lady  who,  a  week  before, 
had  taken  possession  of  the  rooms  on  the  ground 
floor,  the  "  parlours  "  of  Mrs.  Bundy's  terminology. 
He  had  heard  her,  and  from  his  window,  two  or  three 
times,  had  even  seen  her  pass  in  and  out,  and  this 
observation  had  created  in  his  mind  a  vague  prejudice 
in  her  favour.  Such  a  prejudice,  it  was  true,  had  been 
subjected  to  a  violent  test ;  it  had  been  fairly  appar 
ent  that  she  had  a  light  step,  but  it  was  still  less  to 
be  overlooked  that  she  had  a  cottage  piano.  She 
had  furthermore  a  little  boy  and  a  very  sweet  voice, 
of  which  Peter  Baron  had  caught  the  accent,  not 
from  her  singing  (for  she  only  played),  but  from  her 
gay  admonitions  to  her  child,  whom  she  occasionally 
allowed  to  amuse  himself  —  under  restrictions  very 
publicly  enforced  —  in  the  tiny  black  patch  which,  as 
a  forecourt  to  each  house,  was  held,  in  the  humble 
row,  to  be  a  feature.  Jersey  Villas  stood  in  pairs, 
semi-detached,  and  Mrs.  Ryves  —  such  was  the  name 
under  which  the  new  lodger  presented  herself  —  had 
been  admitted  to  the  house  as  confessedly  musical. 
Mrs.  Bundy,  the  earnest  proprietress  of  No.  3,  who 
considered  her  "  parlours  "  (they  were  a  dozen  feet 


48  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

square),  even  more  attractive,  if  possible,  than  the 
second  floor  with  which  Baron  had  had  to  content 
himself  —  Mrs.  Bundy,  who  reserved  the  drawing- 
room  for  a  casual  dressmaking  business,  had  threshed 
out  the  subject  of  the  new  lodger  in  advance  with 
our  young  man,  reminding  him  that  her  affection  for 
his  own  person  was  a  proof  that,  other  things  being 
equal,  she  positively  preferred  tenants  who  were 
clever. 

This  was  the  case  with  Mrs.  Ryves ;  she  had  satis 
fied  Mrs.  Bundy  that  she  was  not  a  simple  strummer. 
Mrs.  Bundy  admitted  to  Peter  Baron  that,  for  herself, 
she  had  a  weakness  for  a  pretty  tune,  and  Peter 
could  honestly  reply  that  his  ear  was  equally  sensi 
tive.  Everything  would  depend  on  the  "touch"  of 
their  inmate.  Mrs.  Ryves's  piano  would  blight  his 
existence  if  her  hand  should  prove  heavy  or  her 
selections  vulgar ;  but  if  she  played  agreeable  things 
and  played  them  in  an  agreeable  way  she  would 
render  him  rather  a  service  while  he  smoked  the 
pipe  of  "form."  Mrs.  Bundy,  who  wanted  to  let  her 
rooms,  guaranteed  on  the  part  of  the  stranger  a  first- 
class  talent,  and  Mrs.  Ryves,  who  evidently  knew 
thoroughly  what  she  was  about,  had  not  falsified  this 
somewhat  rash  prediction.  She  never  played  in  the 
morning,  which  was  Baron's  working-time,  and  he 
found  himself  listening  with  pleasure  at  other  hours 
to  her  discreet  and  melancholy  strains.  He  really 
knew  little  about  music,  and  the  only  criticism  he 
would  have  made  of  Mrs.  Ryves's  conception  of  it 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  49 

was  that  she  seemed  devoted  to  the  dismal.  It  was 
not,  however,  that  these  strains  were  not  pleasant  to 
him ;  they  floated  up,  on  the  contrary,  as  a  sort  of 
conscious  response  to  some  of  his  broodings  and 
doubts.  Harmony,  therefore,  would  have  reigned 
supreme  had  it  not  been  for  the  singularly  bad  taste 
of  No.  4.  Mrs.  Ryves's  piano  was  on  the  free  side 
of  the  house  and  was  regarded  by  Mrs.  Bundy  as 
open  to  no  objection  but  that  of  their  own  gentleman, 
who  was  so  reasonable.  As  much,  however,  could 
not  be  said  of  the  gentleman  of  No.  4,  who  had  not 
even  Mr.  Baron's  excuse  of  being  "littery  "  (he  kept 
a  bull-terrier  and  had  five  hats  —  the  street  could 
count  them),  and  whom,  if  you  had  listened  to  Mrs. 
Bundy,  you  would  have  supposed  to  be  divided  from 
the  obnoxious  instrument  by  walls  and  corridors, 
obstacles  and  intervals,  of  massive  structure  and 
fabulous  extent.  This  gentleman  had  taken  up  an 
attitude  which  had  now  passed  into  the  phase  of 
correspondence  and  compromise ;  but  it  was  the 
opinion  of  the  immediate  neighbourhood  that  he  had 
not  a  leg  to  stand  upon,  and  on  whatever  subject  the 
sentiment  of  Jersey  Villas  might  have  been  vague,  it 
was  not  so  on  the  rights  and  the  wrongs  of  landladies. 
Mrs.  Ryves's  little  boy  was  in  the  garden  as  Peter 
Baron  issued  from  the  house,  and  his  mother  ap 
peared  to  have  come  out  for  a  moment,  bareheaded, 
to  see  that  he  was  doing  no  harm.  She  was  discuss 
ing  with  him  the  responsibility  that  he  might  incur 
by  passing  a  piece  of  string  round  one  of  the  iron 


50  SIR   DOMINICK   FERRAND. 

palings  and  pretending  he  was  in  command  of  a 
"  geegee  "  ;  but  it  happened  that  at  the  sight  of  the 
other  lodger  the  child  was  seized  with  a  finer  percep 
tion  of  the  drivable.  He  rushed  at  Baron  with  a 
flourish  of  the  bridle,  shouting,  "  Ou  geegee  !  "  in  a 
manner  productive  of  some  refined  embarrassment  to 
his  mother.  Baron  met  his  advance  by  mounting 
him  on  a  shoulder  and  feigning  to  prance  an  instant, 
so  that  by  the  time  this  performance  was  over — -it 
took  but  a  few  seconds  —  the  young  man  felt  intro 
duced  to  Mrs.  Ryves.  Her  smile  struck  him  as 
charming,  and  such  an  impression  shortens  many 
steps.  She  said,  "  Oh,  thank  you  —  you  mustn't  let 
him  worry  you"  ;  and  then  as,  having  put  down  the 
child  and  raised  his  hat,  he  was  turning  away,  she 
added :  "  It's  very  good  of  you  not  to  complain  of 
my  piano." 

"I  particularly  enjoy  it  —  you  play  beautifully," 
said  Peter  Baron. 

"I  have  to  play,  you  see  —  it's  all  I  can  do.  But 
the  people  next  door  don't  like  it,  though  my  room, 
you  know,  is  not  against  their  wall.  Therefore  I 
thank  you  for  letting  me  tell  them  that  you,  in  the 
house,  don't  find  me  a  nuisance." 

She  looked  gentle  and  bright  as  she  spoke,  and  as 
the  young  man's  eyes  rested  on  her  the  tolerance  for 
which  she  expressed  herself  indebted  seemed  to  him 
the  least  indulgence  she  might  count  upon.  But  he 
only  laughed  and  said  "  Oh,  no,  you're  not  a  nui 
sance  !  "  and  felt  more  and  more  introduced. 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  51 

The  little  boy,  who  was  handsome,  hereupon  clam 
oured  for  another  ride,  and  she  took  him  up  herself, 
to  moderate  his  transports.  She  stood  a  moment  with 
the  child  in  her  arms,  and  he  put  his  fingers  exuber 
antly  into  her  hair,  so  that  while  she  smiled  at  Baron 
she  slowly,  permittingly  shook  her  head  to  get  rid  of 
them. 

"  If  they  really  make  a  fuss  I'm  afraid  I  shall  have 
to  go,"  she  went  on. 

"  Oh,  don't  go !  "  Baron  broke  out,  with  a  sudden 
expressiveness  which  made  his  voice,  as  it  fell  upon 
his  ear,  strike  him  as  the  voice  of  another.  She  gave 
a  vague  exclamation  and,  nodding  slightly  but  not 
unsociably,  passed  back  into  the  house.  She  had 
made  an  impression  which  remained  till  the  other 
party  to  the  conversation  reached  the  railway-station, 
when  it  was  superseded  by  the  thought  of  his  pro 
spective  discussion  with  Mr.  Locket.  This  was  a 
proof  of  the  intensity  of  that  interest. 

The  aftertaste  of  the  later  conference  was  also 
intense  for  Peter  Baron,  who  quitted  his  editor  with 
his  manuscript  under  his  arm.  He  had  had  the 
question  out  with  Mr.  Locket,  and  he  was  in  a  flutter 
which  ought  to  have  been  a  sense  of  triumph  and 
which  indeed  at  first  he  succeeded  in  regarding  in 
this  light.  Mr.  Locket  had  had  to  admit  that  there 
was  an  idea  in  his  story,  and  that  was  a  tribute  which 
Baron  was  in  a  position  to  make  the  most  of. 
But  there  was  also  a  scene  which  scandalised  the 
editorial  conscience  and  which  the  young  man  had 


52  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

promised  to  rewrite.  The  idea  that  Mr.  Locket  had 
been  so  good  as  to  disengage  depended  for  clearness 
mainly  on  this  scene ;  so  it  was  easy  to  see  his  objec 
tion  was  perverse.  This  inference  was  probably  a 
part  of  the  joy  in  which  Peter  Baron  walked  as  he 
carried  home  a  contribution  it  pleased  him  to  classify 
as  accepted.  He  walked  to  work  off  his  excitement 
and  to  think  in  what  manner  he  should  reconstruct. 
He  went  some  distance  without  settling  that  point, 
and  then,  as  it  began  to  worry  him,  he  looked 
vaguely  into  shop-windows  for  solutions  and  hints. 
Mr.  Locket  lived  in  the  depths  of  Chelsea,  in  a  little 
panelled,  amiable  house,  and  Baron  took  his  way 
homeward  along  the  King's  Road.  There  was  a  new 
amusement  for  him,  a  fresher  bustle,  in  a  London 
walk  in  the  morning ;  these  were  hours  that  he 
habitually  spent  at  his  table,  in  the  awkward  attitude 
engendered  by  the  poor  piece  of  furniture,  one  of 
the  rickety  features  of  Mrs.  Bundy's  second  floor, 
which  had  to  serve  as  his  altar  of  literary  sacrifice. 
If  by  exception  he  went  out  when  the  day  was 
young  he  noticed  that  life  seemed  younger  with  it ; 
there  were  livelier  industries  to  profit  by  and  shop 
girls,  often  rosy,  to  look  at ;  a  different  air  was  in 
the  streets  and  a  chaff  of  traffic  for  the  observer  of 
manners  to  catch.  Above  all,  it  was  the  time  when 
poor  Baron  made  his  purchases,  which  were  wholly 
of  the  wandering  mind ;  his  extravagances,  for  some 
mysterious  reason,  were  all  matutinal,  and  he  had  a 
foreknowledge  that  if  ever  he  should  ruin  himself  it 


SIR    DOM1NICK    FERRAND.  53 

would  be  well  before  noon.  He  felt  lavish  this  morn 
ing,  on  the  strength  of  what  the  Promiscuous  would 
do  for  him ;  he  had  lost  sight  for  the  moment  of 
what  he  should  have  to  do  for  the  Promiscuous. 
Before  the  old  bookshops  and  printshops,  the  crowded 
panes  of  the  curiosity-mongers  and  the  desirable 
exhibitions  of  mahogany  "done  up,"  he  used,  by  an 
innocent  process,  to  commit  luxurious  follies.  He 
refurnished  Mrs.  Bundy  with  a  freedom  that  cost  her 
nothing,  and  lost  himself  in  pictures  of  a  transfigured 
second  floor. 

On  this  particular  occasion  the  King's  Road  proved 
almost  unprecedentedly  expensive,  and  indeed  this 
occasion  differed  from  most  others  in  containing  the 
germ  of  real  danger.  For  once  in  a  way  he  had  a 
bad  conscience  —  he  felt  himself  tempted  to  pick  his 
own  pocket.  He  never  saw  a  commodious  writing- 
table,  with  elbow-room  and  drawers  and  a  fair  ex 
panse  of  leather  stamped  neatly  at  the  edge  with  gilt, 
without  being  freshly  reminded  of  Mrs.  Bundy's 
dilapidations.  There  were  several  such  tables  in 
the  King's  Road  —  they  seemed  indeed  particularly 
numerous  today.  Peter  Baron  glanced  at  them  all 
through  the  fronts  of  the  shops,  but  there  was  one 
that  detained  him  in  supreme  contemplation.  There 
was  a  fine  assurance  about  it  which  seemed  a  guar 
antee  of  masterpieces ;  but  when  at  last  he  went  in 
and,  just  to  help  himself  on  his  way,  asked  the  impos 
sible  price,  the  sum  mentioned  by  the  voluble  vendor 
mocked  at  him  even  more  than  he  had  feared.  It 


54  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

was  far  too  expensive,  as  he  hinted,  and  he  was  on 
the  point  of  completing  his  comedy  by  a  pensive  re 
treat  when  the  shopman  bespoke  his  attention  for 
another  article  of  the  same  general  character,  which 
he  described  as  remarkably  cheap  for  what  it  was. 
It  was  an  old  piece,  from  a  sale  in  the  country,  and 
it  had  been  in  stock  some  time  ;  but  it  had  got  pushed 
out  of  sight  in  one  of  the  upper  rooms  —  they  con 
tained  such  a  wilderness  of  treasures  —  and  happened 
to  have  but  just  come  to  light.  Peter  suffered  him 
self  to  be  conducted  into  an  interminable  dusky  rear, 
where  he  presently  found  himself  bending  over  one 
of  those  square  substantial  desks  of  old  mahogany, 
raised,  with  the  aid  of  front  legs,  on  a  sort  of  retreat 
ing  pedestal  which  is  fitted  with  small  drawers,  con 
tracted  conveniences  known  immemorially  to  the 
knowing  as  davenports.  This  specimen  had  visibly 
seen  service,  but  it  had  an  old-time  solidity  and  to 
Peter  Baron  it  unexpectedly  appealed. 

He  would  have  said  in  advance  that  such  an  article 
was  exactly  what  he  didn't  want,  but  as  the  shopman 
pushed  up  a  chair  for  him  and  he  sat  down  with  his 
elbows  on  the  gentle  slope  of  the  large,  firm  lid,  he 
felt  that  such  a  basis  for  literature  would  be  half  the 
battle.  He  raised  the  lid  and  looked  lovingly  into 
the  deep  interior ;  he  sat  ominously  silent  while  his 
companion  dropped  the  striking  words  :  "  Now  that's 
an  article  I  personally  covet !  "  Then  when  the  man 
mentioned  the  ridiculous  price  (they  were  literally 
giving  it  away),  he  reflected  on  the  economy  of  having 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  55 

a  literary  altar  on  which  one  could  really  kindle  a  fire. 
A  davenport  was  a  compromise,  but  what  was  all  life 
but  a  compromise  ?  He  could  beat  down  the  dealer, 
and  at  Mrs.  Bundy's  he  had  to  write  on  an  insincere 
cardtable.  After  he  had  sat  for  a  minute  with  his 
nose  in  the  friendly  desk  he  had  a  queer  impression 
that  it  might  tell  him  a  secret  or  two  —  one  of  the 
secrets  of  form,  one  of  the  sacrificial  mysteries  — 
though  no  doubt  its  career  had  been  literary  only  in 
the  sense  of  its  helping  some  old  lady  to  write  invita 
tions  to  dull  dinners.  There  was  a  strange,  faint 
odour  in  the  receptacle,  as  if  fragrant,  hallowed  things 
had  once  been  put  away  there.  When  he  took  his 
head  out  of  it  he  said  to  the  shopman  :  "  I  don't  mind 
meeting  you  halfway."  He  had  been  told  by  know 
ing  people  that  that  was  the  right  thing.  He  felt 
rather  vulgar,  but  the  davenport  arrived  that  evening 
at  Jersey  Villas. 


II. 


"  I  DARESAY  it  will  be  all  right ;  he  seems  quiet 
now,"  said  the  poor  lady  of  the  "  parlours  "  a  few  days 
later,  in  reference  to  their  litigious  neighbour  and  the 
precarious  piano.  The  two  lodgers  had  grown  regu 
larly  acquainted,  and  the  piano  had  had  much  to  do 
with  it.  Just  as  this  instrument  served,  with  the 
gentleman  at  No.  4,  as  a  theme  for  discussion,  so  be 
tween  Peter  Baron  and  the  lady  of  the  parlours  it  had 
become  a  basis  of  peculiar  agreement,  a  topic,  at  any 


56  SIR    DOMIN1CK    FERRAND. 

rate,  of  conversation  frequently  renewed.  Mrs.  Ryves 
was  so  prepossessing  that  Peter  was  sure  that  even 
if  they  had  not  had  the  piano  he  would  have  found 
something  else  to  thresh  out  with  her.  Fortunately 
however  they  did  have  it,  and  he,  at  least,  made  the 
most  of  it,  knowing  more  now  about  his  new  friend, 
who  when,  widowed  and  fatigued,  she  held  her 
beautiful  child  in  her  arms,  looked  dimly  like  a 
modern  Madonna.  Mrs.  Bundy,  as  a  letter  of  fur 
nished  lodgings,  was  characterised  in  general  by  a 
familiar  domestic  severity  in  respect  to  picturesque 
young  women,  but  she  had  the  highest  confidence  in 
Mrs.  Ryves.  She  was  luminous  about  her  being  a 
lady,  and  a  lady  who  could  bring  Mrs.  Bundy  back 
to  a  gratified  recognition  of  one  of  those  manifesta 
tions  of  mind  for  which  she  had  an  independent 
esteem.  She  was  professional,  but  Jersey  Villas 
could  be  proud  of  a  profession  that  didn't  happen  to 
be  the  wrong  one  —  they  had  seen  something  of 
that.  Mrs.  Ryves  had  a  hundred  a  year  (Baron  won 
dered  how  Mrs.  Bundy  knew  this ;  he  thought  it  un 
likely  Mrs.  Ryves  had  told  her),  and  for  the  rest  she 
depended  on  her  lovely  music.  Baron  judged  that 
her  music,  even  though  lovely,  was  a  frail  depend 
ence  ;  it  would  hardly  help  to  fill  a  concert-room,  and 
he  asked  himself  at  first  whether  she  played  country- 
dances  at  children's  parties  or  gave  lessons  to  young 
ladies  who  studied  above  their  station. 

Very  soon,  indeed,  he  was  sufficiently  enlightened ; 
it  all  went  fast,  for  the  little  boy  had  been  almost  as 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  57 

great  a  help  as  the  piano.  Sidney  haunted  the  door 
step  of  No.  3  ;  he  was  eminently  sociable,  and  had 
established  independent  relations  with  Peter,  a  fre 
quent  feature  of  which  was  an  adventurous  visit, 
upstairs,  to  picture  books  criticised  for  not  being  all 
geegees  and  walking  sticks  happily  more  conform 
able.  The  young  man's  window,  too,  looked  out  on 
their  acquaintance ;  through  a  starched  muslin  cur 
tain  it  kept  his  neighbour  before  him,  made  him  almost 
more  aware  of  her  comings  and  goings  than  he  felt 
he  had  a  right  to  be.  He  was  capable  of  a  shyness 
of  curiosity  about  her  and  of  dumb  little  delicacies 
of  consideration.  She  did  give  a  few  lessons ;  they 
were  essentially  local,  and  he  ended  by  knowing 
more  or  less  what  she  went  out  for  and  what  she 
came  in  from.  She  had  almost  no  visitors,  only  a 
decent  old  lady  or  two,  and,  every  day,  poor  dingy 
Miss  Teagle,  who  was  also  ancient  and  who  came 
humbly  enough  to  governess  the  infant  of  the  par 
lours.  Peter  Baron's  window  had  always,  to  his  sense, 
looked  out  on  a  good  deal  of  life,  and  one  of  the 
things  it  had  most  shown  him  was  that  there  is  no 
body  so  bereft  of  joy  as  not  to  be  able  to  command 
for  twopence  the  services  of  somebody  less  joyous. 
Mrs.  Ryves  was  a  struggler  (Baron  scarcely  liked  to 
think  of  it),  but  she  occupied  a  pinnacle  for  Miss 
Teagle,  who  had  lived  on  —  and  from  a  noble  nursery 
—  into  a  period  of  diplomas  and  humiliation. 

Mrs.  Ryves  sometimes  went  out,  like  Baron  himself, 
with  manuscripts  under  her  arm,  and,  still  more  like 


58  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

Baron,  she  almost  always  came  back  with  them. 
Her  vain  approaches  were  to  the  music-sellers  ;  she 
tried  to  compose  —  to  produce  songs  that  would  make 
a  hit.  A  successful  song  was  an  income,  she  confided 
to  Peter  one  of  the  first  times  he  took  Sidney,  blase 
and  drowsy,  back  to  his  mother.  It  was  not  on  one 
of  these  occasions,  but  once  when  he  had  come  in  on 
no  better  pretext  than  that  of  simply  wanting  to  (she 
had  after  all  virtually  invited  him),  that  she  men 
tioned  how  only  one  song  in  a  thousand  was  success 
ful  and  that  the  terrible  difficulty  was  in  getting  the 
right  words.  This  rightness  \vas  just  a  vulgar  "  fluke  " 
—  there  were  lots  of  words  really  clever  that  were 
of  no  use  at  all.  Peter  said,  laughing,  that  he  sup 
posed  any  words  he  should  try  to  produce  would  be 
sure  to  be  too  clever ;  yet  only  three  weeks  after  his 
first  encounter  with  Mrs.  Ryves  he  sat  at  his  delight 
ful  davenport  (well  aware  that  he  had  duties  more 
pressing),  trying  to  string  together  rhymes  idiotic 
enough  to  make  his  neighbour's  fortune.  He  was 
satisfied  of  the  fineness  of  her  musical  gift  —  it  had 
the  touching  note.  The  touching  note  was  in  her 
person  as  well. 

The  davenport  was  delightful,  after  six  months  of 
its  tottering  predecessor,  and  such  a  reinforcement 
to  the  young  man's  style  was  not  impaired  by  his 
sense  of  something  lawless  in  the  way  it  had  been 
gained.  He  had  made  the  purchase  in  anticipation 
of  the  money  he  expected  from  Mr.  Locket,  but  Mr. 
Locket's  liberality  was  to  depend  on  the  ingenuity  of 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  59 

% 

his  contributor,  who  now  found  himself  confronted 
with  the  consequence  of  a  frivolous  optimism.  The 
fruit  of  his  labour  presented,  as  he  stared  at  it  with 
his  elbows  on  his  desk,  an  aspect  uncompromising 
and  incorruptible.  It  seemed  to  look  up  at  him 
reproachfully  and  to  say,  with  its  essential  finish : 
"  How  could  you  promise  anything  so  base ;  how 
could  you  pass  your  word  to  mutilate  and  dishonour 
me?"  The  alterations  demanded  by  Mr.  Locket 
were  impossible,  the  concessions  to  the  platitude  of 
his  conception  of  the  public  mind  were  degrading. 
The  public  mind  !  —  as  if  the  public  Jiad  a  mind,  or 
any  principle  of  perception  more  discoverable  than 
the  stare  of  huddled  sheep !  Peter  Baron  felt  that 
it  concerned  him  to  determine  if  he  were  only  not 
clever  enough  or  if  he  were  simply  not  abject  enough 
to  rewrite  his  story.  He  might  in  truth  have  had 
less  pride  if  he  had  had  more  skill,  and  more  discre 
tion  if  he  had  had  more  practice.  Humility,  in  the 
profession  of  letters,  was  half  of  practice,  and  resig 
nation  was  half  of  success.  Poor  Peter  actually 
flushed  with  pain  as  he  recognised  that  this  was  not 
success,  the  production  of  gelid  prose  which  his  editor 
could  do  nothing  with  on  the  one  side  and  he  himself 
could  do  nothing  with  on  the  other.  The  truth 
about  his  luckless  tale  was  now  the  more  bitter  from 
his  having  managed,  for  some  days,  to  taste  it  as 
sweet. 

As  he  sat  there,  baffled  and  sombre,  biting  his  pen 
and  wondering  what  was  meant  by  the  "rewards  "  of 


6O  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

literature,  he  generally  ended  by  tossing  away  the 
composition  deflowered  by  Mr.  Locket  and  trying 
his  hand  at  the  sort  of  twaddle  that  Mrs.  Ryves 
might  be  able  to  set  to  music.  Success  in  these  ex 
periments  wouldn't  be  a  reward  of  literature,  but  it 
might  very  well  become  a  labour  of  love.  The  experi 
ments  would  be  pleasant  enough  for  him  if  they 
were  pleasant  for  his  inscrutable  neighbour.  That 
was  the  way  he  thought  of  her  now,  for  he  had 
learned  enough  about  her,  little  by  little,  to  guess 
how  much  there  was  still  to  learn.  To  spend  his 
mornings  over  cheap  rhymes  for  her  was  certainly  to 
shirk  the  immediate  question  ;  but  there  were  hours 
when  he  judged  this  question  to  be  altogether  too 
arduous,  reflecting  that  he  might  quite  as  well  perish 
by  the  sword  as  by  famine.  Besides,  he  did  meet  it 
obliquely  when  he  considered  that  he  shouldn't  be 
an  utter  failure  if  he  were  to  produce  some  songs  to 
which  Mrs.  Ryves's  accompaniments  would  give  a 
circulation.  He  had  not  ventured  to  show  her  any 
thing  yet,  but  one  morning,  at  a  moment  when  her 
little  boy  was  in  his  room,  it  seemed  to  him  that,  by 
an  inspiration,  he  had  arrived  at  the  happy  middle 
course  (it  was  an  art  by  itself),  between  sound  and 
sense.  If  the  sense  was  not  confused  it  was  because 
the  sound  was  so  familiar. 

He  had  said  to  the  child,  to  whom  he  had  sacrificed 
barley-sugar  (it  had  no  attraction  for  his  own  lips, 
yet  in  these  days  there  was  always  some  of  it  about), 
he  had  confided  to  the  small  Sidney  that  if  he  would 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  6l 

wait  a  little  he  should  be  intrusted  with  something 
nice  to  take  down  to  his  parent.  Sidney  had  absorb 
ing  occupation  and,  while  Peter  copied  off  the  song 
in  a  pretty  hand,  roamed,  gurgling  and  sticky,  about 
the  room.  In  this  manner  he  lurched  like  a  little 
toper  into  the  rear  of  the  davenport,  which  stood  a 
few  steps  out  from  the  recess  of  the  window,  and,  as 
he  was  fond  of  beating  time  to  his  intensest  joys, 
began  to  bang  on  the  surface  of  it  with  a  paper- 
knife  which  at  that  spot  had  chanced  to  fall  upon  the 
floor.  At  the  moment  Sidney  committed  this  violence 
his  kind  friend  had  happened  to  raise  the  lid  of  the 
desk  and,  with  his  head  beneath  it,  was  rummaging 
among  a  mass  of  papers  for  a  proper  envelope.  "  I 
say,  I  say,  my  boy  ! "  he  exclaimed,  solicitous  for 
the  ancient  glaze  of  his  most  cherished  possession. 
Sidney  paused  an  instant ;  then,  while  Peter  still 
hunted  for  the  envelope,  he  administered  another, 
and  this  time  a  distinctly  disobedient,  rap.  Peter 
heard  it  from  within  and  was  struck  with  its  oddity 
of  sound  —  so  much  so  that,  leaving  the  child  for  a 
moment  under  a  demoralising  impression  of  impunity, 
he  waited  with  quick  curiosity  for  a  repetition  of  the 
stroke.  It  came  of  course  immediately,  and  then  the 
young  man,  who  had  at  the  same  instant  found  his 
envelope  and  ejaculated  "  Hallo,  this  thing  has  a 
false  back !  "  jumped  up  and  secured  his  visitor, 
whom  with  his  left  arm  he  held  in  durance  on  his 
knee  while  with  his  free  hand  he  addressed  the 
missive  to  Mrs.  Ryves. 


62  SIR   DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

As  Sidney  was  fond  of  errands  he  was  easily 
got  rid  of,  and  after  he  had  gone  Baron  stood  a 
moment  at  the  window  chinking  pennies  and  keys  in 
pockets  and  wondering  if  the  charming  composer 
would  think  his  song  as  good,  or  in  other  words  as 
bad,  as  he  thought  it.  His  eyes  as  he  turned  away 
fell  on  the  wooden  back  of  the  davenport,  where,  to 
his  regret,  the  traces  of  Sidney's  assault  were  visible 
in  three  or  four  ugly  scratches.  "  Confound  the 
little  brute !  "  he  exclaimed,  feeling  as  if  an  altar  had 
been  desecrated.  He  was  reminded,  however,  of  the 
observation  this  outrage  had  led  him  to  make,  and, 
for  further  assurance,  he  knocked  on  the  wood  with 
his  knuckle.  It  sounded  from  that  position  com 
monplace  enough,  but  his  suspicion  was  strongly 
confirmed  when,  again  standing  beside  the  desk,  he 
put  his  head  beneath  the  lifted  lid  and  gave  ear  while 
with  an  extended  arm  he  tapped  sharply  in  the  same 
place.  The  back  was  distinctly  hollow ;  there  was 
a  space  between  the  inner  and  the  outer  pieces  (he 
could  measure  it),  so  wide  that  he  was  a  fool  not  to 
have  noticed  it  before.  The  depth  of  the  receptacle 
from  front  to  rear  was  so  great  that  it  could  sacrifice 
a  certain  quantity  of  room  without  detection.  The 
sacrifice  could  of  course  only  be  for  a  purpose,  and 
the  purpose  could  only  be  the  creation  of  a  secret 
compartment.  Peter  Baron  was  still  boy  enough  to 
be  thrilled  by  the  idea  of  such  a  feature,  the  more 
so  as  every  indication  of  it  had  been  cleverly  con 
cealed.  The  people  at  the  shop  had  never  noticed 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  63 

it,  else  they  would  have  called  his  attention  to  it 
as  an  enhancement  of  value.  His  legendary  lore 
instructed  him  that  where  there  was  a  hiding-place 
there  was  always  a  hidden  spring,  and  he  pried  and 
pressed  and  fumbled  in  an  eager  search  for  the 
sensitive  spot.  The  article  was  really  a  wonder  of 
neat  construction ;  everything  fitted  with  a  closeness 
that  completely  saved  appearances. 

It  took  Baron  some  minutes  to  pursue  his  inquiry, 
during  which  he  reflected  that  the  people  of  the  shop 
were  not  such  fools  after  all.  They  had  admitted 
moreover  that  they  had  accidentally  neglected  this 
relic  of  gentility  —  it  had  been  overlooked  in  the 
multiplicity  of  their  treasures.  He  now  recalled  that 
the  man  had  wanted  to  polish  it  up  before  sending 
it  home,  and  that,  satisfied  for  his  own  part  with  its 
honourable  appearance  and  averse  in  general  to  shiny 
furniture,  he  had  in  his  impatience  declined  to  wait 
for  such  an  operation,  so  that  the  object  had  left  the 
place  for  Jersey  Villas,  carrying  presumably  its  secret 
with  it,  two  or  three  hours  after  his  visit.  This 
secret  it  seemed  indeed  capable  of  keeping ;  there 
was  an  absurdity  in  being  bafHed,  but  Peter  couldn't 
find  the  spring.  He  thumped  and  sounded,  he 
listened  and  measured  again ;  he  inspected  every 
joint  and  crevice,  with  the  effect  of  becoming  surer 
still  of  the  existence  of  a  chamber  and  of  making  up 
his  mind  that  his  davenport  was  a  rarity.  Not  only 
was  there  a  compartment  between  the  two  backs, 
but  there  was  distinctly  something  in  the  compart- 


64  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

ment !  Perhaps  it  was  a  lost  manuscript  —  a  nice, 
safe,  old-fashioned  story  that  Mr.  Locket  wouldn't 
object  to.  Peter  returned  to  the  charge,  for  it  had 
occurred  to  him  that  he  had  perhaps  not  sufficiently 
visited  the  small  drawers,  of  which,  in  two  vertical 
rows,  there  were  six  in  number,  of  different  sizes, 
inserted  sideways  into  that  portion  of  the  structure 
which  formed  part  of  the  support  of  the  desk.  He 
took  them  out  again  and  examined  more  minutely  the 
condition  of  their  sockets,  with  the  happy  result  of 
discovering  at  last,  in  the  place  into  which  the  third 
on  the  left-hand  row  was  fitted,  a  small  sliding  panel. 
Behind  the  panel  was  a  spring,  like  a  flat  button, 
which  yielded  with  a  click  when  he  pressed  it  and 
which  instantly  produced  a  loosening  of  one  of  the 
pieces  of  the  shelf  forming  the  highest  part  of  the 
davenport  —  pieces  adjusted  to  each  other  with  the 
most  deceptive  closeness. 

This  particular  piece  proved  to  be,  in  its  turn,  a 
sliding  panel,  which,  when  pushed,  revealed  the 
existence  of  a  smaller  receptacle,  a  narrow,  oblong 
box,  in  the  false  back.  Its  capacity  was  limited,  but 
if  it  couldn't  hold  many  things  it  might  hold  precious 
ones.  Baron,  in  presence  of  the  ingenuity  with 
which  it  had  been  dissimulated,  immediately  felt  that, 
but  for  the  odd  chance  of  little  Sidney  Ryves's 
having  hammered  on  the  outside  at  the  moment 
he  himself  happened  to  have  his  head  in  the  desk, 
he  might  have  remained  for  years  without  suspicion 
of  it.  This  apparently  would  have  been  a  loss,  for 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  65 

he  had  been  right  in  guessing  that  the  chamber  was 
not  empty.  It  contained  objects  which,  whether 
precious  or  not,  had  at  any  rate  been  worth  some 
body's  hiding.  These  objects  were  a  collection  of 
small  flat  parcels,  of  the  shape  of  packets  of  letters, 
wrapped  in  white  paper  and  neatly  sealed.  The 
seals,  mechanically  figured,  bore  the  impress  neither 
of  arms  nor  of  initials  ;  the  paper  looked  old  —  it  had 
turned  faintly  sallow ;  the  packets  might  have  been 
there  for  ages.  Baron  counted  them  —  there  were 
nine  in  all,  of  different  sizes ;  he  turned  them  over 
and  over,  felt  them  curiously  and  snuffed  in  their 
vague,  musty  smell,  which  affected  him  with  the  mel 
ancholy  of  some  smothered  human  accent.  The  little 
bundles  were  neither  named  nor  numbered  —  there 
was  not  a  word  of  writing  on  any  of  the  covers ; 
but  they  plainly  contained  old  letters,  sorted  and 
matched  according  to  dates  or  to  authorship.  They 
told  some  old,  dead  story  —  they  were  the  ashes  of 
fires  burned  out. 

As  Peter  Baron  held  his  discoveries  successively  in 
his  hands  he  became  conscious  of  a  queer  emotion 
which  was  not  altogether  elation  and  yet  was  still  less 
pure  pain.  He  had  made  a  find,  but  it  somehow 
added  to  his  responsibility ;  he  was  in  the  presence 
of  something  interesting,  but  (in  a  manner  he  couldn't 
have  defined)  this  circumstance  suddenly  constituted 
a  danger.  It  was  the  perception  of  the  danger,  for 
instance,  which  caused  to  remain  in  abeyance  any 
impulse  he  might  have  felt  to  break  one  of  the  seals. 


66  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

He  looked  at  them  all  narrowly,  but  he  was  careful 
not  to  loosen  them,  and  he  wondered  uncomfortably 
whether  the  contents  of  the  secret  compartment 
would  be  held  in  equity  to  be  the  property  of  the 
people  in  the  King's  Road.  He  had  given  money 
for  the  davenport,  but  had  he  given  money  for  these 
buried  papers  ?  He  paid  by  a  growing  conscious 
ness  that  a  nameless  chill  had  stolen  into  the  air  the 
penalty,  which  he  had  many  a  time  paid  before,  of 
being  made  of  sensitive  stuff.  It  was  as  if  an  oc 
casion  had  insidiously  arisen  for  a  sacrifice  —  a  sac 
rifice  for  the  sake  of  a  fine  superstition,  something 
like  honour  or  kindness  or  justice,  something  indeed 
perhaps  even  finer  still  —  a  difficult  deciphering  of 
duty,  an  impossible  tantalising  wisdom.  Standing 
there  before  his  ambiguous  treasure  and  losing 
himself  for  the  moment  in  the  sense  of  a  dawning 
complication,  he  was  startled  by  a  light,  quick  tap  at 
the  door  of  his  sitting-room.  Instinctively,  before 
answering,  he  listened  an  instant  —  he  was  in  the 
attitude  of  a  miser  surprised  while  counting  his  hoard. 
Then  he  answered  "  One  moment,  please ! "  and 
slipped  the  little  heap  of  packets  into  the  biggest  of 
the  drawers  of  the  davenport,  which  happened  to  be 
open.  The  aperture  of  the  false  back  was  still  gaping, 
and  he  had  not  time  to  work  back  the  spring.  He 
hastily  laid  a  big  book  over  the  place  and  then  went 
and  opened  his  door. 

It    offered   him   a   sight  none    the   less    agreeable 
for   being   unexpected — the    graceful    and    agitated 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  6/ 

figure  of  Mrs.  Ryves.  Her  agitation  was  so  visible 
that  he  thought  at  first  that  something  dreadful  had 
happened  to  her  child  —  that  she  had  rushed  up  to 
ask  for  help,  to  beg  him  to  go  for  the  doctor.  Then 
he  perceived  that  it  was  probably  connected  with  the 
desperate  verses  he  had  transmitted  to  her  a  quarter 
of  an  hour  before ;  for  she  had  his  open  manuscript 
in  one  hand  and  was  nervously  pulling  it  about  with 
the  other.  She  looked  frightened  and  pretty,  and  if, 
in  invading  the  privacy  of  a  fellow-lodger,  she  had 
been  guilty  of  a  departure  from  rigid  custom,  she  was 
at  least  conscious  of  the  enormity  of  the  step  and 
incapable  of  treating  it  with  levity.  The  levity  was 
for  Peter  Baron,  who  endeavoured,  however,  to  clothe 
his  familiarity  with  respect,  pushing  forward  the  seat 
of  honour  and  repeating  that  he  rejoiced  in  such  a 
visit.  The  visitor  came  in,  leaving  the  door  ajar, 
and  after  a  minute  during  which,  to  help  her,  he 
charged  her  with  the  purpose  of  telling  him  that  he 
ought  to  be  ashamed  to  send  her  down  such  rubbish, 
she  recovered  herself  sufficiently  to  stammer  out  that 
his  song  was  exactly  what  she  had  been  looking  for 
and  that  after  reading  it  she  had  been  seized  with  an 
extraordinary,  irresistible  impulse  —  that  of  thanking 
him  for  it  in  person  and  without  delay. 

"  It  was  the  impulse  of  a  kind  nature,"  he  said, 
"and  I  can't  tell  you  what  pleasure  you  give  me." 

She  declined  to  sit  down,  and  evidently  wished  to 
appear  to  have  come  but  for  a  few  seconds.  She 
looked  confusedly  at  the  place  in  which  she  found 


68  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

herself,  and  when  her  eyes  met  his  own  they  struck 
him  as  anxious  and  appealing.  She  was  evidently 
not  thinking  of  his  song,  though  she  said  three  or 
four  times  over  that  it  was  beautiful.  "  Well,  I  only 
wanted  you  to  know,  and  now  I  must  go,"  she  added; 
but  on  his  hearthrug  she  lingered  with  such  an  odd 
helplessness  that  he  felt  almost  sorry  for  her. 

"  Perhaps  I  can  improve  it  if  you  find  it  doesn't 
go,"  said  Baron.  "  I'm  so  delighted  to  do  anything 
for  you  I  can." 

"  There  may  be  a  word  or  two  that  might  be 
changed,"  she  answered,  rather  absently.  "  I  shall 
have  to  think  it  over,  to  live  with  it  a  little.  But  I 
like  it,  and  that's  all  I  wanted  to  say." 

"Charming  of  you.  I'm  not  a  bit  busy,"  said 
Baron. 

Again  she  looked  at  him  with  a  troubled  intensity, 
then  suddenly  she  demanded :  "  Is  there  anything 
the  matter  with  you  ?  " 

"  The  matter  with  me  ?  " 

"  I  mean  like  being  ill  or  worried.  I  wondered  if 
there  might  be ;  I  had  a  sudden  fancy ;  and  that,  I 
think,  is  really  why  I  came  up." 

"There  isn't,  indeed;  I'm  all  right.  But  your 
sudden  fancies  are  inspirations." 

"It's  absurd.  You  must  excuse  me.  Good-by !  " 
said  Mrs.  Ryves. 

"What  are  the  words  you  want  changed?"  Baron 
asked. 

"I   don't  want  any  —  if   you're   all  right.     Good- 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  69 

by,"  his  visitor  repeated,  fixing  her  eyes  an  instant 
on  an  object  on  his  desk  that  had  caught  them.  His 
own  glanced  in  the  same  direction  and  he  saw  that  in 
his  hurry  to  shuffle  away  the  packets  found  in  the 
davenport  he  had  overlooked  one  of  them,  which  lay 
with  its  seals  exposed.  For  an  instant  he  felt  found 
out,  as  if  he  had  been  concerned  in  something  to  be 
ashamed  of,  and  it  was  only  his  quick  second  thought 
that  told  him  how  little  the  incident  of  which  the 
packet  was  a  sequel  was  an  affair  of  Mrs.  Ryves's. 
Her  conscious  eyes  came  back  to  his  as  if  they  were 
sounding  them,  and  suddenly  this  instinct  of  keeping 
his  discovery  to  himself  was  succeeded  by  a  really 
startled  inference  that,  with  the  rarest  alertness,  she 
had  guessed  something  and  that  her  guess  (it  seemed 
almost  supernatural),  had  been  her  real  motive. 
Some  secret  sympathy  had  made  her  vibrate  —  had 
touched  her  with  the  knowledge  that  he  had  brought 
something  to  light.  After  an  instant  he  saw  that  she 
also  divined  the  very  reflection  he  was  then  making, 
and  this  gave  him  a  lively  desire,  a  grateful,  happy 
desire,  to  appear  to  have  nothing  to  conceal.  For 
herself,  it  determined  her  still  more  to  put  an  end 
to  her  momentary  visit.  But  before  she  had  passed 
to  the  door  he  exclaimed  : 

"  All  right  ?  How  can  a  fellow  be  anything  else 
who  has  just  had  such  a  find  ?  " 

She  paused  at  this,  still  looking  earnest  and  ask 
ing  :  "  What  have  you  found  ?  " 

"  Some  ancient  family  papers,  in  a  secret  compart- 


/O  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

ment  of  my  writing-table."  And  he  took  up  the 
packet  he  had  left  out,  holding  it  before  her  eyes. 
"  A  lot  of  other  things  like  that." 

"  What  are  they  ?  "  murmured  Mrs.  Ryves. 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea.     They're  sealed." 

"  You  haven't  broken  the  seals  ?  "  She  had  come 
further  back. 

"  I  haven't  had  time ;  it  only  happened  ten  min 
utes  ago." 

"  I  knew  it,"  said  Mrs.  Ryves,  more  gaily  now. 

"  What  did  you  know  ?  " 

"That  you  were  in  some  predicament." 

"  You're  extraordinary.  I  never  heard  of  anything 
so  miraculous;  down  two  flights  of  stairs." 

"Are  you  in  a  quandary  ?  "  the  visitor  asked. 

"Yes,  about  giving  them  back."  Peter  Baron 
stood  smiling  at  her  and  rapping  his  packet  on  the 
palm  of  his  hand.  "  What  do  you  advise  ?  " 

She  herself  smiled  now,  with  her  eyes  on  the  sealed 
parcel.  "  Back  to  whom  ?  " 

"The  man  of  whom  I  bought  the  table." 

"Ah  then,  they're  not  from  your  family  ?  " 

"  No  indeed,  the  piece  of  furniture  in  which  they 
were  hidden  is  not  an  ancestral  possession.  I  bought 
it  at  second  hand  —  you  see  it's  old  —  the  other  day 
in  the  King's  Road.  Obviously  the  man  who  sold  it 
to  me  sold  me  more  than  he  meant ;  he  had  no  idea 
(from  his  own  point  of  view  it  was  stupid  of  him), 
that  there  was  a  hidden  chamber  or  that  mysterious 
documents  were  buried  there.  Ought  I  to  go  and 
tell  him?  It's  rather  a  nice  question." 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  ?I 

"  Are  the  papers  of  value  ?  "  Mrs.  Ryves  inquired. 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea.  But  I  can  ascertain  by 
breaking  a  seal." 

"  Don't !  "  said  Mrs.  Ryves,  with  much  expression. 
She  looked  grave  again. 

"  It's  rather  tantalising —  it's  a  bit  of  a  problem," 
Baron  went  on,  turning  his  packet  over. 

Mrs.  Ryves  hesitated.  "  Will  you  show  me  what 
you  have  in  your  hand  ?  " 

He  gave  her  the  packet,  and  she  looked  at  it  and 
held  it  for  an  instant  to  her  nose.  "  It  has  a  queer, 
charming  old  fragrance,"  he  said. 

"  Charming  ?  It's  horrid."  She  handed  him  back 
the  packet,  saying  again  more  emphatically  "  Don't!  " 

"  Don't  break  a  seal  ?  " 

"  Don't  give  back  the  papers." 

"  Is  it  honest  to  keep  them  ? " 

"Certainly.  They're  yours  as  much  as  the  people's 
of  the  shop.  They  were  in  the  hidden  chamber 
when  the  table  came  to  the  shop,  and  the  people  had 
every  opportunity  to  find  them  out.  They  didn't  — 
therefore  let  them  take  the  consequences." 

Peter  Baron  reflected,  diverted  by  her  intensity. 
She  was  pale,  with  eyes  almost  ardent.  "  The  table 
had  been  in  the  place  for  years." 

"  That  proves  the  things  haven't  been  missed." 

"  Let  me  show  you  how  they  were  concealed,"  he 
rejoined  ;  and  he  exhibited  the  ingenious  recess  and 
the  working  of  the  curious  spring.  She  was  greatly 
interested,  she  grew  excited  and  became  familiar ; 


72  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

she  appealed  to  him  again  not  to  do  anything  so 
foolish  as  to  give  up  the  papers,  the  rest  of  which,  in 
their  little  blank,  impenetrable  covers,  he  placed  in 
a  row  before  her.  "  They  might  be  traced — 'their 
history,  their  ownership,"  he  argued;  to  which  she 
replied  that  this  was  exactly  why  he  ought  to  be 
quiet.  He  declared  that  women  had  not  the  smallest 
sense  of  honour,  and  she  retorted  that  at  any  rate  they 
have  other  perceptions  more  delicate  than  those  of 
men.  He  admitted  that  the  papers  might  be  rubbish, 
and  she  conceded  that  nothing  was  more  probable ; 
yet  when  he  offered  to  settle  the  point  off-hand  she 
caught  him  by  the  wrist,  acknowledging  that,  absurd 
as  it  was,  she  was  nervous.  Finally  she  put  the 
whole  thing  on  the  ground  of  his  just  doing  her  a 
favour.  She  asked  him  to  retain  the  papers,  to  be 
silent  about  them,  simply  because  it  would  please  her. 
That  would  be  reason  enough.  Baron's  acquaint 
ance,  his  agreeable  relations  with  her,  advanced  many 
steps  in  the  treatment  of  this  question ;  an  element 
of  friendly  candour  made  its  way  into  their  discussion 
of  it. 

"  I  can't  make  out  why  it  matters  to  you,  one  way 
or  the  other,  nor  why  you  should  think  it  worth  talk 
ing  about,"  the  young  man  reasoned. 

"  Neither  can  I.     It's  just  a  whim." 

"  Certainly,  if  it  will  give  you  any  pleasure,  I'll  say 
nothing  at  the  shop." 

"  That's  charming  of  you,  and  I'm  very  grateful. 
I  see  now  that  this  was  why  the  spirit  moved  me  to 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  73 

come  up  —  to  save  them,"  Mrs.  Ryves  went  on.  She 
added,  moving  away,  that  now  she  had  saved  them 
she  must  really  go. 

"  To  save  them  for  what,  if  I  mayn't  break  the 
seals  ?  "  Baron  asked. 

"  I  don't  know  —  for  a  generous  sacrifice." 

"  Why  should  it  be  generous  ?  What's  at  stake  ?  " 
Peter  demanded,  leaning  against  the  doorpost  as  she 
stood  on  the  landing. 

"  I  don't  know  what,  but  I  feel  as  if  something  or 
other  were  in  peril.  Burn  them  up  !  "  she  exclaimed 
with  shining  eyes. 

"Ah,  you  ask  too  much  —  I'm  so  curious  about 
them!  " 

"Well,  I  won't  ask  more  than  I  ought,  and  I'm 
much  obliged  to  you  for  your  promise  to  be  quiet.  I 
trust  to  your  discretion.  Good-by." 

"  You  ought  to  reward  my  discretion,"  said  Baron, 
coming  out  to  the  landing. 

She  had  partly  descended  the  staircase  and  she 
stopped,  leaning  against  the  baluster  and  smiling  up 
at  him.  "  Surely  you've  had  your  reward  in  the  honour 
of  my  visit." 

"  That's  delightful  as  far  as  it  goes.  But  what  will 
you  do  for  me  if  I  burn  the  papers  ? " 

Mrs.  Ryves  considered  a  moment.  "  Burn  them 
first  and  you'll  see  !  " 

On  this  she  went  rapidly  downstairs,  and  Baron, 
to  whom  the  answer  appeared  inadequate  and  the 
proposition  indeed  in  that  form  grossly  unfair, 


74  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

returned  to  his  room.  The  vivacity  of  her  interest 
in  a  question  in  which  she  had  discoverably  nothing 
at  stake  mystified,  amused  and,  in  addition,  irresist 
ibly  charmed  him.  She  was  delicate,  imaginative, 
inflammable,  quick  to  feel,  quick  to  act.  He  didn't 
complain  of  it,  it  was  the  way  he  liked  women  to  be ; 
but  he  was  not  impelled  for  the  hour  to  commit  the 
sealed  packets  to  the  flames.  He  dropped  them 
again  into  their  secret  well,  and  after  that  he  went 
out.  He  felt  restless  and  excited;  another  day  was 
lost  for  work  —  the  dreadful  job  to  be  performed  for 
Mr.  Locket  was  still  further  off. 


III. 


TEN  days  after  Mrs.  Ryves's  visit  he  paid  by 
appointment  another  call  on  the  editor  of  the  Pro 
miscuous.  He  found  him  in  the  little  wainscoted 
Chelsea  house,  which  had  to  Peter's  sense  the  smoky 
brownness  of  an  old  pipebowl,  surrounded  with  all 
the  emblems  of  his  office  —  a  litter  of  papers,  a 
hedge  of  encyclopaedias,  a  photographic  gallery  of 
popular  contributors  —  and  he  promised  at  first  to 
consume  very  few  of  the  moments  for  which  so  many 
claims  competed.  It  was  Mr.  Locket  himself  how 
ever  who  presently  made  the  interview  spacious,  gave 
it  air  after  discovering  that  poor  Baron  had  come  to 
tell  him  something  more  interesting  than  that  he 
couldn't  after  all  patch  up  his  tale.  Peter  had  begun 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  75 

with  this,  had  intimated  respectfully  that  it  was  a 
case  in  which  both  practice  and  principle  rebelled, 
and  then,  perceiving  how  little  Mr.  Locket  was 
affected  by  his  audacity,  had  felt  weak  and  slightly 
silly,  left  with  his  heroism  on  his  hands.  He  had 
armed  himself  for  a  struggle,  but  the  Promiscuous 
didn't  even  protest,  and  there  would  have  been 
nothing  for  him  but  to  go  away  with  the  prospect 
of  never  coming  again  had  he  not  chanced  to  say 
abruptly,  irrelevantly,  as  he  got  up  from  his  chair : 

"  Do  you  happen  to  be  at  all  interested  in  Sir 
Dominick  Ferrand  ? " 

Mr.  Locket,  who  had  also  got  up,  looked  over  his 
glasses.  "  The  late  Sir  Dominick  ?  " 

"The  only  one;  you  know  the  family's  extinct." 

Mr.  Locket  shot  his  young  friend  another  sharp 
glance,  a  silent  retort  to  the  glibness  of  this  infor 
mation.  "  Very  extinct  indeed.  I'm  afraid  the  sub 
ject  today  would  scarcely  be  regarded  as  attractive." 

"  Are  you  very  sure  ?  "  Baron  asked. 

Mr.  Locket  leaned  forward  a  little,  with  his  finger 
tips  on  his  table,  in  the  attitude  of  giving  permission 
to  retire.  "  I  might  consider  the  question  in  a  special 
connection."  He  was  silent  a  minute,  in  a  way  that 
relegated  poor  Peter  to  the  general ;  but  meeting 
the  young  man's  eyes  again  he  asked:  "Are  you— - 
a  —  thinking  of  proposing  an  article  upon  him?" 

"Not  exactly  proposing  it  —  because  I  don't  yet 
quite  see  my  way ;  but  the  idea  rather  appeals 
to  me." 


76  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

Mr.  Locket  emitted  the  safe  assertion  that  this 
eminent  statesman  had  been  a  striking  figure  in  his 
day ;  then  he  added :  "  Have  you  been  studying 
him  ? " 

"  I've  been  dipping  into  him." 

"  I'm  afraid  he's  scarcely  a  question  of  the  hour," 
said  Mr.  Locket,  shuffling  papers  together. 

"  I  think  I  could  make  him  one,"  Peter  Baron 
declared. 

Mr.  Locket  stared  again  ;  he  was  unable  to  repress 
an  unattenuated  "  You  ?  " 

"  I  have  some  new  material,"  said  the  young  man, 
colouring  a  little.  "That  often  freshens  up  an  old 
story." 

"  It  buries  it  sometimes.  It's  often  only  another 
tombstone." 

"  That  depends  upon  what  it  is.  However,"  Peter 
added,  "  the  documents  I  speak  of  would  be  a  crush 
ing  monument." 

Mr.  Locket,  hesitating,  shot  another  glance  under 
his  glasses.  "  Do  you  allude  to  —  a —  revelations?  " 

"Very  curious  ones." 

Mr.  Locket,  still  on  his  feet,  had  kept  his  body  at 
the  bowing  angle ;  it  was  therefore  easy  for  him 
after  an  instant  to  bend  a  little  further  and  to  sink 
into  his  chair  with  a  movement  of  his  hand  toward 
the  seat  Baron  had  occupied.  Baron  resumed  pos 
session  of  this  convenience,  and  the  conversation 
took  a  fresh  start  on  a  basis  which  such  an  extension 
of  privilege  could  render  but  little  less  humiliating 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  77 

to  our  young  man.  He  had  matured  no  plan  of 
confiding  his  secret  to  Mr.  Locket,  and  he  had  really 
come  out  to  make  him  conscientiously  that  other 
announcement  as  to  which  it  appeared  that  so  much 
artistic  agitation  had  been  wasted.  He  had  indeed 
during  the  past  days  —  days  of  painful  indecision  — 
appealed  in  imagination  to  the  editor  of  the  Pro 
miscuous,  as  he  had  appealed  to  other  sources  of 
comfort ;  but  his  scruples  turned  their  face  upon  him 
from  quarters  high  as  well  as  low,  and  if  on  the  one 
hand  he  had  by  no  means  made  up  his  mind  not  to 
mention  his  strange  knowledge,  he  had  still  more  left 
to  the  determination  of  the  moment  the  question  of 
how  he  should  introduce  the  subject.  He  was  in  fact 
too  nervous  to  decide  ;  he  only  felt  that  he  needed 
for  his  peace  of  mind  to  communicate  his  discovery. 
He  wanted  an  opinion,  the  impression  of  somebody 
else,  and  even  in  this  intensely  professional  presence, 
five  minutes  after  he  had  begun  to  tell  his  queer 
story,  he  felt  relieved  of  half  his  burden.  His  story 
was  very  queer;  he  could  take  the  measure  of  that 
himself  as  he  spoke ;  but  wouldn't  this  very  circum 
stance  qualify  it  for  the  Promiscuous  ? 

"  Of  course  the  letters  may  be  forgeries,"  said  Mr. 
Locket  at  last. 

"  I've  no  doubt  that's  what  many  people  will  say." 

"  Have  they  been  seen  by  any  expert  ? " 

"  No  indeed  ;  they've  been  seen  by  nobody." 

"  Have  you  got  any  of  them  with  you  ? " 

"  No  ;  I  felt  nervous  about  bringing  them  out." 


7°  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

"  That's  a  pity.  I  should  have  liked  the  testimony 
of  my  eyes." 

"You  may  have  it  if  you'll  come  to  my  rooms.  If 
you  don't  care  to  do  that  without  a  further  guarantee 
I'll  copy  you  out  some  passages." 

"  Select  a  few  of  the  worst !  "  Mr.  Locket  laughed. 
Over  Baron's  distressing  information  he  had  become 
quite  human  and  genial.  But  he  added  in  a  moment 
more  dryly :  "  You  know  they  ought  to  be  seen  by 
an  expert." 

"  That's  exactly  what  I  dread,"  said  Peter. 

"They'll  be  worth  nothing  to  me  if  they're  not." 

Peter  communed  with  his  innermost  spirit.  "  How 
much  will  they  be  worth  to  me  if  they  are  ?  " 

Mr.  Locket  turned  in  his  study-chair.  "  I  should 
require  to  look  at  them  before  answering  that  ques 
tion." 

"I've  been  to  the  British  museum  —  there  are 
many  of  his  letters  there.  I've  obtained  permission 
to  see  them,  and  I've  compared  everything  carefully. 
I  repudiate  the  possibility  of  forgery.  No  sign  of 
genuineness  is  wanting ;  there  are  details,  down  to 
the  very  postmarks,  that  no  forger  could  have 
invented.  Besides,  whose  interest  could  it  conceiv 
ably  have  been  ?  A  labor  of  unspeakable  difficulty, 
and  all  for  what  advantage  ?  There  are  so  many 
letters,  too  —  twenty-seven  in  all." 

"  Lord,  what  an  ass  !  "  Mr.  Locket  exclaimed. 

"  It  will  be  one  of  the  strangest  post-mortem  reve 
lations  of  which  history  preserves  the  record." 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  79 

Mr.  Locket,  grave  now,  worried  with  a  paper-knife 
the  crevice  of  a  drawer.  "  It's  very  odd.  But  to  be 
worth  anything  such  documents  should  be  subjected 
to  a  searching  criticism  —  I  mean  of  the  historical 
kind." 

"  Certainly ;  that  would  be  the  task  of  the  writer 
introducing  them  to  the  public." 

Again  Mr.  Locket  considered ;  then  with  a  smile 
he  looked  up.  "  You  had  better  give  up  original 
composition  and  take  to  buying  old  furniture." 

"Do  you  mean  because  it  will  pay  better? " 

"For  you,  I  should  think,  original  composition 
couldn't  pay  worse.  The  creative  faculty's  so  rare." 

"I  do  feel  tempted  to  turn  my  attention  to  real 
heroes,"  Peter  replied. 

"  I'm  bound  to  declare  that  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand 

was  never  one  of  mine.     Flashy,  crafty,  second-rate 

-  that's  how  I've  always  read  him.     It  was   never 

a  secret,  moreover,  that  his  private  life  had  its  weak 

spots.     He  was  a  mere  flash  in  the  pan." 

"  He  speaks  to  the  people  of  this  country,"  said 
Baron. 

"  He  did  ;  but  his  voice  —  the  voice,  I  mean,  of  his 
prestige  —  is  scarcely  audible  now." 

"  They're  still  proud  of  some  of  the  things  he  did 
at  the  Foreign  Office  —  the  famous  'exchange'  with 
Spain,  in  the  Mediterranean,  which  took  Europe  so 
by  surprise  and  by  which  she  felt  injured,  especially 
when  it  became  apparent  how  much  we  had  the  best 
of  the  bargain.  Then  the  sudden,  unexpected  show 


8O  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

of  force  by  which  he  imposed  on  the  United  States 
our  interpretation  of  that  tiresome  treaty  —  I  could 
never  make  out  what  it  was  about.  These  were  both 
matters  that  no  one  really  cared  a  straw  about,  but 
he  made  every  one  feel  as  if  they  cared ;  the  nation 
rose  to  the  way  he  played  his  trumps  —  it  was  un 
common.  He  was  one  of  the  few  men  we've  had,  in 
our  period,  who  took  Europe,  or  took  America,  by 
surprise,  made  them  jump  a  bit;  and  the  country 
liked  his  doing  it  —  it  was  a  pleasant  change.  The 
rest  of  the  world  considered  that  they  knew  in  any 
case  exactly  what  we  would  do,  which  was  usually 
nothing  at  all.  Say  what  you  like,  he's  still  a  high 
name  ;  partly  also,  no  doubt,  on  account  of  other 
things  —  his  early  success  and  early  death,  his  politi 
cal  'cheek'  and  wit;  his  very  appearance — he  cer 
tainly  was  handsome  —  and  the  possibilities  (of  future 
personal  supremacy)  which  it  was  the  fashion  at  the 
time,  which  it's  the  fashion  still,  to  say  had  passed 
away  with  him.  He  had  been  twice  at  the  Foreign 
Office ;  that  alone  was  remarkable  for  a  man  dying  at 
forty-four.  What  therefore  will  the  country  think 
when  it  learns  he  was  venal  ?  " 

Peter  Baron  himself  was  not  angry  with  Sir  Dom- 
inick  Ferrand,  who  had  simply  become  to  him  (he 
had  been  "  reading  up  "  feverishly  for  a  week)  a  very 
curious  subject  of  psychological  study;  but  he  could 
easily  put  himself  in  the  place  of  that  portion  of  the 
public  whose  memory  was  long  enough  for  their 
patriotism  to  receive  a  shock.  It  was  some  time 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  8 1 

fortunately  since  the  conduct  of  public  affairs  had 
wanted  for  men  of  disinterested  ability,  but  the 
extraordinary  documents  concealed  (of  all  places  in 
the  world  —  it  was  as  fantastic  as  a  nightmare)  in  a 
"  bargain"  picked  up  at  second-hand  by  an  obscure 
scribbler,  would  be  a  calculable  blow  to  the  retro 
spective  mind.  Baron  saw  vividly  that  if  these  relics 
should  be  made  public  the  scandal,  the  horror,  the 
chatter  would  be  immense.  Immense  would  be  also 
the  contribution  to  truth,  the  rectification  of  history. 
He  had  felt  for  several  days  (and  it  was  exactly  what 
had  made  him  so  nervous)  as  if  he  held  in  his  hand 
the  key  to  public  attention. 

"  There  are  too  many  things  to  explain,"  Mr. 
Locket  went  on,  "  and  the  singular  provenance  of 
your  papers  would  count  almost  overwhelmingly 
against  them  even  if  the  other  objections  were  met. 
There  would  be  a  perfect  and  probably  a  very  com 
plicated  pedigree  to  trace.  How  did  they  get  into 
your  davenport,  as  you  call  it,  and  how  long  had  they 
been  there  ?  What  hands  secreted  them  ?  what 
hands  had,  so  incredibly,  clung  to  them  and  preserved 
them  ?  Who  are  the  persons  mentioned  in  them  ? 
who  are  the  correspondents,  the  parties  to  the  nefa 
rious  transactions  ?  You  say  the  transactions  appear 
to  be  of  two  distinct  kinds  —  some  of  them  connected 
with  public  business  and  others  involving  obscure 
personal  relations." 

"They  all  have  this  in  common,"  said  Peter  Baron, 
"  that  they  constitute  evidence  of  uneasiness,  in  some 


82  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

instances  of  painful  alarm,  on  the  writer's  part,  in 
relation  to  exposure  —  the  exposure  in  the  one  case, 
as  I  gather,  of  the  fact  that  he  had  availed  himself 
of  official  opportunities  to  promote  enterprises  (public 
works  and  that  sort  of  thing)  in  which  he  had  a 
pecuniary  stake.  The  dread  of  the  light  in  the  other 
connection  is  evidently  different,  and  these  letters 
are  the  earliest  in  date.  They  are  addressed  to 
a  woman,  from  whom  he  had  evidently  received 
money." 

Mr.  Locket  wiped  his  glasses.     "What  woman?" 

"  I  haven't  the  least  idea.  There  are  lots  of  ques 
tions  I  can't  answer,  of  course ;  lots  of  identities  I 
can't  establish ;  lots  of  gaps  I  can't  fill.  But  as  to 
two  points  I'm  clear,  and  they  are  the  essential  ones. 
In  the  first  place  the  papers  in  my  possession  are 
genuine ;  in  the  second  place  they're  compromising." 

With  this  Peter  Baron  rose  again,  rather  vexed 
with  himself  for  having  been  led  on  to  advertise  his 
treasure  (it  was  his  interlocutor's  perfectly  natural 
scepticism  that  produced  this  effect),  for  he  felt  that 
he  was  putting  himself  in  a  false  position.  He 
detected  in  Mr.  Locket's  studied  detachment  the 
fermentation  of  impulses  from  which,  unsuccessful  as 
he  was,  he  himself  prayed  to  be  delivered. 

Mr.  Locket  remained  seated ;  he  watched  Baron 
go  across  the  room  for  his  hat  and  umbrella.  "  Of 
course,  the  question  would  come  up  of  whose  prop 
erty  today  such  documents  would  legally  be.  There 
are  heirs,  descendants,  executors  to  consider." 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  83 

"  In  some  degree  perhaps;  but  I've  gone  into  that 
a  little.  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand  had  no  children,  and 
he  left  no  brothers  and  no  sisters.  His  wife  survived 
him,  but  she  died  ten  years  ago.  He  can  have  had 
no  heirs  and  no  executors  to  speak  of,  for  he  left  no 
property." 

"That's  to  his  honour  and  against  your  theory," 
said  Mr.  Locket. 

"I  have  no  theory.  He  left  a  largeish  mass  of 
debt,"  Peter  Baron  added.  At  this  Mr.  Locket  got 
up,  while  his  visitor  pursued  :  "  So  far  as  I  can  ascer 
tain,  though  of  course  my  inquiries  have  had  to  be 
very  rapid  and  superficial,  there  is  no  one  now  living, 
directly  or  indirectly  related  to  the  personage  in  ques 
tion,  who  would  be  likely  to  suffer  from  any  steps  in 
the  direction  of  publicity.  It  happens  to  be  a  rare 
instance  of  a  life  that  had,  as  it  were,  no  loose  ends. 
At  least  there  are  none  perceptible  at  present." 

"  I  see,  I  see,"  said  Mr.  Locket.  "  But  I  don't 
think  I  should  care  much  for  your  article." 

"What  article?" 

"The  one  you  seem  to  wish  to  write,  embodying 
this  new  matter." 

"Oh,  I  don't  wish  to  write  it!"  Peter  exclaimed. 
And  then  he  bade  his  host  good-by. 

"Good-by,"  said  Mr.  Locket.  "Mind  you,  I  don't 
say  that  I  think  there's  nothing  in  it." 

"You  would  think  there  was  something  in  it  if  you 
were  to  see  my  documents." 

"I   should   like  to   see    the  secret  compartment," 


84  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

the  caustic  editor  rejoined.  "  Copy  me  out  some 
extracts." 

"To  what  end,  if  there's  no  question  of  their  being 
of  use  to  you  ?  " 

"I  don't  say  that —  I  might  like  the  letters  them 
selves." 

"  Themselves?" 

"  Not  as  the  basis  of  a  paper,  but  just  to  publish 
—  for  a  sensation." 

"  They'd  sell  your  number  !  "  Baron  laughed. 

"I  daresay  I  should  like  to  look  at  them,"  Mr. 
Locket  conceded  after  a  moment.  "When  should  I 
find  you  at  home?  " 

"  Don't  come,"  said  the  young  man.  "  I  make 
you  no  offer." 

"  I  might  makejjw/  one,"  the  editor  hinted. 

"  Don't  trouble  yourself  ;  I  shall  probably  destroy 
them."  With  this  Peter  Baron  took  his  departure, 
waiting  however  just  afterwards,  in  the  street  near 
the  house,  as  if  he  had  been  looking  out  for  a  stray 
hansom,  to  which  he  would  not  have  signalled  had 
it  appeared.  He  thought  Mr.  Locket  might  hurry 
after  him,  but  Mr.  Locket  seemed  to  have  other 
things  to  do,  and  Peter  Baron  returned  on  foot  to 
Jersey  Villas. 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  85 


IV. 


ON  the  evening  that  succeeded  this  apparently 
pointless  encounter  he  had  an  interview  more 
conclusive  with  Mrs.  Bundy,  for  whose  shrewd 
and  philosophic  view  of  life  he  had  several  times 
expressed,  even  to  the  good  woman  herself,  a  con 
siderable  relish.  The  situation  at  Jersey  Villas 
(Mrs.  Ryves  had  suddenly  flown  off  to  Dover)  was 
such  as  to  create  in  him  a  desire  for  moral  support, 
and  there  was  a  kind  of  domestic  determination  in 
Mrs.  Bundy  which  seemed,  in  general,  to  advertise  it. 
He  had  asked  for  her  on  coming  in,  but  had  been 
told  she  was  absent  for  the  hour ;  upon  which  he 
had  addressed  himself  mechanically  to  the  task  of 
doing  up  his  dishonoured  manuscript  —  the  ingenious 
fiction  about  which  Mr.  Locket  had  been  so  stupid  — 
for  further  adventures  and  not  improbable  defeats. 
He  passed  a  restless,  ineffective  afternoon,  asking 
himself  if  his  genius  were  a  horrid  delusion,  looking 
out  of  his  window  for  something  that  didn't  happen, 
something  that  seemed  now  to  be  the  advent  of  a 
persuasive  Mr.  Locket  and  now  the  return,  from  an 
absence  more  disappointing  even  than  Mrs.  Bundy's, 
of  his  interesting  neighbour  of  the  parlours.  He  was 
so  nervous  and  so  depressed  that  he  was  unable  even 
to  fix  his  mind  on  the  composition  of  the  note  with 
which,  on  its  next  peregrination,  it  was  necessary 
that  his  manuscript  should  be  accompanied.  He  was 


86  SIR    DOMINICK    FERKAND. 

too  nervous  to  eat,  and  he  forgot  even  to  dine ;  he 
forgot  to  light  his  candles,  he  let  his  fire  go  out,  and 
it  was  in  the  melancholy  chill  of  the  late  dusk  that 
Mrs.  Bundy,  arriving  at  last  with  his  lamp,  found 
him  extended  moodily  upon  his  sofa.  She  had  been 
informed  that  he  wished  to  speak  to  her,  and  as  she 
placed  on  the  malodorous  luminary  an  oily  shade  of 
green  pasteboard  she  expressed  the  friendly  hope 
that  there  was  nothing  wrong  with  his  'ealth. 

The  young  man  rose  from  his  couch,  pulling  him 
self  together  sufficiently  to  reply  that  his  health  was 
well  enough  but  that  his  spirits  were  down  in  his 
boots.  He  had  a  strong  disposition  to  "  draw  "  his 
landlady  on  the  subject  of  Mrs.  Ryves,  as  well  as  a 
vivid  conviction  that  she  constituted  a  theme  as  to 
which  Mrs.  Bundy  would  require  little  pressure  to 
tell  him  even  more  than  she  knew.  At  the  same 
time  he  hated  to  appear  to  pry  into  the  secrets  of  his 
absent  friend  ;  to  discuss  her  with  their  bustling  host 
ess  resembled  too  much  for  his  taste  a  gossip  with  a 
tattling  servant  about  an  unconscious  employer.  He 
left  out  of  account  however  Mrs.  Bundy's  knowledge 
of  the  human  heart,  for  it  was  this  fine  principle  that 
broke  down  the  barriers  after  he  had  reflected  reas 
suringly  that  it  was  not  meddling  with  Mrs.  Ryves's 
affairs  to  try  and  find  out  if  she  struck  such  an  ob 
server  as  happy.  Crudely,  abruptly,  even  a  little 
blushingly,  he  put  the  direct  question  to  Mrs.  Bundy, 
and  this  led  tolerably  straight  to  another  question, 
which,  on  his  spirit,  sat  equally  heavy  (they  were 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  8/ 

indeed  but  different  phases  of  the  same),  and  which 
the  good  woman  answered  with  expression  when  she 
ejaculated  :  "  Think  it  a  liberty  for  you  to  run  down 
for  a  few  hours  ?     If  she  do,  my  dear  sir,  just  send 
her  to  me  to  talk  to!  "     As  regards  happiness  indeed 
she  warned  Baron  against  imposing  too  high  a  stand 
ard  on  a  young  thing  who  had  been  through  so  much, 
and  before  he  knew  it  he  found  himself,  without  the 
responsibility  of  choice,  in  submissive  receipt  of  Mrs. 
Bundy's  version  of  this  experience.     It  was  an  inter 
esting  picture,  though  it   had   its  infirmities,  one  of 
them  congenital  and  consisting  of  the  fact  that  it  had 
sprung  essentially  from   the  virginal  brain   of   Miss 
Teagle.     Amplified,  edited,  embellished  by  the  richer 
genius  of  Mrs.  Bimdy,  who  had  incorporated  with  it 
and   now  liberally  introduced    copious    interleavings 
of  Miss  Teagle's  own  romance,  it  gave  Peter  Baron 
much  food  for  meditation,  at  the  same  time  that  it 
only  half  relieved  his  curiosity  about  the  causes  of 
the  charming  woman's  underlying  strangeness.     He 
sounded   this    note  experimentally  in   Mrs.   Bundy's 
ear,  but  it  was  easy  so  see  that  it  didn't  reverberate 
in  her  fancy.     She  had   no    idea  of  the  picture   it 
would  have  been  natural  for  him  to  desire  that  Mrs. 
Ryves  should  present  to  him,  and  she  was  therefore 
unable  to  estimate  the  points  in  respect  to  which  his 
actual  impression  was  irritating.     She  had  indeed  no 
adequate  conception  of  the  intellectual  requirements 
of  a  young  man  in  love.     She  couldn't  tell  him  why 
their  faultless   friend  was   so   isolated,  so   unrelated, 


88  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

so  nervously,  shrinkingly  proud.  On  the  other  hand 
she  could  tell  him  (he  knew  it  already)  that  she  had 
passed  many  years  of  her  life  in  the  acquisition  of 
accomplishments  at  a  seat  of  learning  no  less  remote 
than  Boulogne,  and  that  Miss  Teagle  had  been  inti 
mately  acquainted  with  the  late  Mr.  Everard  Ryves, 
who  was  a  "  most  rising  "  young  man  in  the  city,  not 
making  any  year  less  than  his  clear  twelve  hundred. 
"  Now  that  he  isn't  there  to  make  them,  his  mourn 
ing  widow  can't  live  as  she  had  then,  can  she  ? " 
Mrs.  Bundy  asked. 

Baron  was  not  prepared  to  say  that  she  could,  but 
he  thought  of  another  way  she  might  live  as  he  sat, 
the  next  day,  in  the  train  which  rattled  him  down  to 
Dover.  The  place,  as  he  approached  it,  seemed 
bright  and  breezy  to  him ;  his  roamings  had  been 
neither  far  enough  nor  frequent  enough  to  make  the 
cockneyfied  coast  insipid.  Mrs.  Bundy  had  of  course 
given  him  the  address  he  needed,  and  on  emerging 
from  the  station  he  was  on  the  point  of  asking  what 
direction  he  should  take.  His  attention  however  at 
this  moment  was  drawn  away  by  the  bustle  of  the 
departing  boat.  He  had  been  long  enough  shut  up 
in  London  to  be  conscious  of  refreshment  in  the 
mere  act  of  turning  his  face  to  Paris.  He  wandered 
off  to  the  pier  in  company  with  happier  tourists  and, 
leaning  on  a  rail,  watched  enviously  the  preparation, 
the  agitation  of  foreign  travel.  It  was  for  some 
minutes  a  foretaste  of  adventure  ;  but,  ah,  when  was 
he  to  have  the  very  draught?  He  turned  away  as 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  89 

he  dropped  this  interrogative  sigh,  and  in  doing  so 
perceived  that  in  another  part  of  the  pier  two  ladies 
and  a  little  boy  were  gathered  with  something  of  the 
same  wistfulness.  The  little  boy  indeed  happened 
to  look  round  for  a  moment,  upon  which,  with  the 
keenness  of  the  predatory  age,  he  recognised  in  our 
young  man  a  source  of  pleasures  from  which  he 
lately  had  been  weaned.  He  bounded  forward  with 
irrepressible  cries  of  "  Geegee  ! "  and  Peter  lifted 
him  aloft  for  an  embrace.  On  putting  him  down  the 
pilgrim  from  Jersey  Villas  stood  confronted  with  a 
sensibly  severe  Miss  Teagle,  who  had  followed  her 
little  charge.  "  What's  the  matter  with  the  old 
woman  ?  "  he  asked  himself  as  he  offered  her  a  hand 
which  she  treated  as  the  merest  detail.  Whatever 
it  was,  it  was  (and  very  properly,  on  the  part  of  a 
loyal  suivante)  the  same  complaint  as  that  of  her 
employer,  to  whom,  from  a  distance,  for  Mrs.  Ryves 
had  not  advanced  an  inch,  he  flourished  his  hat  as  she 
stood  looking  at  him  with  a  face  that  he  imagined 
rather  white.  Mrs.  Ryves's  response  to  this  saluta 
tion  was  to  shift  her  position  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  appear  again  absorbed  in  the  Calais  boat.  Peter 
Baron,  however,  kept  hold  of  the  child,  whom  Miss 
Teagle  artfully  endeavoured  to  wrest  from  him  —  a 
policy  in  which  he  was  aided  by  Sidney's  own  rough 
but  instinctive  loyalty  ;  and  he  was  thankful  for  the 
happy  effect  of  being  dragged  by  his  jubilant  friend 
in  the  very  direction  in  which  he  had  tended  for  so 
many  hours.  Mrs.  Ryves  turned  once  more  as  he 


QO  %SIR    DOM.INICK    FERRAND. 

came  near,  and  then,  from  the  sweet,  strained  smile 
with  which  she  asked  him  if  he  were  on  his  way  to 
France,  he  saw  that  if  she  had  been  angry  at  his 
having  followed  her  she  had  quickly  got  over  it. 

"No,  I'm  not  crossing;  but  it  came  over  me  that 
you  might  be,  and  that's  why  I  hurried  down  —  to 
catch  you  before  you  were  off." 

"Oh,  we  can't  go — more's  the  pity;  but  why,  if 
we  could,"  Mrs.  Ryves  inquired,  "  should  you  wish  to 
prevent  it  ?  " 

"  Because  I've  something  to  ask  you  first,  something 
that  may  take  some  time."  He  saw  now  that  her 
embarrassment  had  really  not  been  resentful ;  it  had 
been  nervous,  tremulous,  as  the  emotion  of  an  unex 
pected  pleasure  might  have  been.  "  That's  really 
why  I  determined  last  night,  without  asking  your 
leave  first  to  pay  you  this  little  visit  —  that  and  the 
intense  desire  for  another  bout  of  horse-play  with 
Sidney.  Oh,  I've  come  to  see  you,"  Peter  Baron 
went  on,  "  and  I  won't  make  any  secret  of  the  fact 
that  I  expect  you  to  resign  yourself  gracefully  to  the 
trial  and  give  me  all  your  time.  The  day's  lovely, 
and  I'm  ready  to  declare  that  the  place  is  as  good  as 
the  day.  Let  me  drink  deep  of  these  things,  drain 
the  cup  like  a  man  who  hasn't  been  out  of  London 
for  months  and  months.  Let  me  walk  with  you  and 
talk  with  you  and  lunch  with  you  —  I  go  back  this 
afternoon.  Give  me  all  your  hours  in  short,  so  that 
they  may  live  in  my  memory  as  one  of  the  sweetest 
occasions  of  life." 


SIR   DOMINICK   FERRAND.  C)l 

The  emission  of  steam  from  the  French  packet 
made  such  an  uproar  that  Baron  could  breathe  his 
passion  into  the  young  woman's  ear  without  scandal 
ising  the  spectators ;  and  the  charm  which  little  by 
little  it  scattered  over  his  fleeting  visit  proved  in 
deed  to  be  the  collective  influence  of  the  conditions 
he  had  put  into  words.  "  What  is  it  you  wish  to  ask 
me  ?  "  Mrs.  Ryves  demanded,  as  they  stood  there 
together ;  to  which  he  replied  that  he  would  tell  her 
all  about  it  if  she  would  send  Miss  Teagle  off  with 
Sidney.  Miss  Teagle,  who  was  always  anticipating 
her  cue,  had  already  begun  ostentatiously  to  gaze  at 
the  distant  shores  of  France  and  was  easily  enough 
induced  to  take  an  earlier  start  home  and  rise  to  the 
responsibility  of  stopping  on  her  way  to  contend 
with  the  butcher.  She  had  however  to  retire  without 
Sidney,  who  clung  to  his  recovered  prey,  so  that  the 
rest  of  the  episode  was  seasoned,  to  Baron's  sense, 
by  the  importunate  twitch  of  the  child's  little, 
plump,  cool  hand.  The  friends  wandered  together 
with  a  conjugal  air  and  Sidney  not  between  them, 
hanging  wistfully,  first,  over  the  lengthened  picture 
of  the  Calais  boat,  till  they  could  look  after  it,  as  it 
moved  rumbling  away,  in  a  spell  of  silence  which 
seemed  to  confess  —  especially  when,  a  moment  later, 
their  eyes  met  —  that  it  produced  the  same  fond 
fancy  in  each.  The  presence  of  the  boy  moreover 
was  no  hindrance  to  their  talking  in  a  manner  that 
they  made  believe  was  very  frank.  Peter  Baron  pres 
ently  told  his  companion  what  it  was  he  had  taken  a 


Q2  SIR   DOMINICK   FERRAND. 

journey  to  ask,  and  he  had  time  afterwards  to  get 
over  his  discomfiture  at  her  appearance  of  having 
fancied  it  might  be  something  greater.  She  seemed 
disappointed  (but  she  was  forgiving)  on  learning 
from  him  that  he  had  only  wished  to  know  if  she 
judged  ferociously  his  not  having  complied  with  her 
request  to  respect  certain  seals. 

"  How  ferociously  do  you  suspect  me  of  having 
judged  it?"  she  inquired. 

"  Why,  to  the  extent  of  leaving  the  house  the  next 
moment." 

They  were  still  lingering  on  the  great  granite  pier 
when  he  touched  on  this  matter,  and  she  sat  down  at 
the  end  while  the  breeze,  warmed  by  the  sunshine, 
ruffled  the  purple  sea.  She  coloured  a  little  and 
looked  troubled,  and  after  an  instant  she  repeated 
interrogatively  :  "  The  next  moment  ?  " 

"  As  soon  as  I  told  you  what  I  had  done.  I  was 
scrupulous  about  this,  you  will  remember;  I  went 
straight  downstairs  to  confess  to  you.  You  turned 
away  from  me,  saying  nothing ;  I  couldn't  imagine 
—  as  I  vow  I  can't  imagine  now  —  why  such  a  matter 
should  appear  so  closely  to  touch  you.  I  went  out 
on  some  business  and  when  I  returned  you  had 
quitted  the  house.  It  had  all  the  look  of  my  having 
offended  you,  of  your  wishing  to  get  away  from  me. 
You  didn't  even  give  me  time  to  tell  you  how  it  was 
that,  in  spite  of  your  advice,  I  determined  to  see  for 
myself  what  my  discovery  represented.  You  must 
do  me  justice  and  hear  what  determined  me." 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  93 

Mrs.  Ryves  got  up  from  her  seat  and  asked  him, 
as  a  particular  favour,  not  to  allude  again  to  his  dis 
covery.  It  was  no  concern  of  hers  at  all,  and  she 
had  no  warrant  for  prying  into  his  secrets.  She  was 
very  sorry  to  have  been  for  a  moment  so  absurd 
as  to  appear  to  do  so,  and  she  humbly  begged  his 
pardon  for  her  meddling.  Saying  this  she  walked 
on  with  a  charming  colour  in  her  cheek,  while  he 
laughed  out,  though  he  was  really  bewildered,  at  the 
endless  capriciousness  of  women.  Fortunately  the 
incident  didn't  spoil  the  hour,  in  which  there  were 
other  sources  of  satisfaction,  and  they  took  their 
course  to  her  lodgings  with  such  pleasant  little  pauses 
and  excursions  by  the  way  as  permitted  her  to  show 
him  the  objects  of  interest  at  Dover.  She  let  him 
stop  at  a  wine-merchant's  and  buy  a  bottle  for 
luncheon,  of  which,  in  its  order,  they  partook, 
together  with  a  pudding  invented  by  Miss  Teagle, 
which,  as  they  hypocritically  swallowed  it,  made 
them  look  at  each  other  in  an  intimacy  of  indulgence. 
They  came  out  again  and,  while  Sidney  grubbed  in 
the  gravel  of  the  shore,  sat  selfishly  on  the  Parade, 
to  the  disappointment  of  Miss  Teagle,  who  had  fixed 
her  hopes  on  a  fly  and  a  ladylike  visit  to  the  castle. 
Baron  had  his  eye  on  his  watch  —  he  had  to  think  of 
his  train  and  the  dismal  return  and  many  other  mel 
ancholy  things ;  but  the  sea  in  the  afternoon  light 
was  a  more  appealing  picture ;  the  wind  had  gone 
down,  the  Channel  was  crowded,  the  sails  of  the 
ships  were  white  in  the  purple  distance.  The  young 


94  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

man  had  asked  his  companion  (he  had  asked  her 
before)  when  she  was  to  come  back  to  Jersey  Villas, 
and  she  had  said  that  she  should  probably  stay  at 
Dover  another  week.  It  was  dreadfully  expensive, 
but  it  was  doing  the  child  all  the  good  in  the  world, 
and  if  Miss  Teagle  could  go  up  for  some  things  she 
should  probably  be  able  to  manage  an  extension. 
Earlier  in  the  day  she  had  said  that  she  perhaps 
wouldn't  return  to  Jersey  Villas  at  all,  or  only  return 
to  wind  up  her  connection  with  Mrs.  Bundy.  At 
another  moment  she  had  spoken  of  an  early  date,  an 
immediate  reoccupation  of  the  wonderful  parlours. 
Baron  saw  that  she  had  no  plan,  no  real  reasons,  that 
she  was  vague  and,  in  secret,  worried  and  nervous, 
waiting  for  something  that  didn't  depend  on  herself. 
A  silence  of  several  minutes  had  fallen  upon  them 
while  they  watched  the  shining  sails  ;  to  which  Mrs. 
Ryves  put  an  end  by  exclaiming  abruptly,  but  with 
out  completing  her  sentence :  "Oh,  if  you  had  come 
to  tell  me  you  had  destroyed  them  — 

"  Those  terrible  papers  ?  I  like  the  way  you  talk 
about  ' '  destroying  ! '  You  don't  even  know  what 
they  are." 

"I  don't  want  to  know;  they  put  me  into  a  state." 

"  What  sort  of  a  state  ?  " 

"  I  don't  know ;  they  haunt  me." 

"  They  haunted  me  ;  that  was  why,  early  one  morn 
ing,  suddenly,  I  couldn't  keep  my  hands  off  them.  I 
had  told  you  I  wouldn't  touch  them.  I  had  deferred 
to  your  whim,  your  superstition  (what  is  it  ?)  but  at 


SIR   DOMINICK    FERRAND.  95 

last  they  got  the  better  of  me.  I  had  lain  awake 
all  night  threshing  about,  itching  with  curiosity.  It 
made  me  ill ;  my  own  nerves  (as  I  may  say)  were 
irritated,  my  capacity  to  work  was  gone.  It  had 
come  over  me  in  the  small  hours  in  the  shape  of  an 
obsession,  a  fixed  idea,  that  there  was  nothing  in  the 
ridiculous  relics  and  that  my  exaggerated  scruples 
were  making  a  fool  of  me.  It  was  ten  to  one  they 
were  rubbish,  they  were  vain,  they  were  empty ; 
that  they  had  been  even  a  practical  joke  on  the 
part  of  some  weak-minded  gentleman  of  leisure,  the 
former  possessor  of  the  confounded  davenport.  The 
longer  I  hovered  about  them  with  such  precautions 
the  longer  I  was  taken  in,  and  the  sooner  I  exposed 
their  insignificance  the  sooner  I  should  get  back  to 
my  usual  occupations.  This  conviction  made  my 
hand  so  uncontrollable  that  that  morning  before 
breakfast  I  broke  one  of  the  seals.  It  took  me  but 
a  few  minutes  to  perceive  that  the  contents  were  not 
rubbish ;  the  little  bundle  contained  old  letters  — 
very  curious  old  letters." 

"  I  know  —  I  know  ;  '  private  and  confidential.'  So 
you  broke  the  other  seals  ?  "  Mrs.  Ryves  looked  at 
him  with  the  strange  apprehension  he  had  seen  in 
her  eyes  when  she  appeared  at  his  door  the  moment 
after  his  discovery. 

"You  know,  of  course,  because  I  told  you  an  hour 
later,  though  you  would  let  me  tell  you  very  little." 

Baron,  as  he  met  this  queer  gaze,  smiled  hard  at 
her  to  prevent  her  guessing  that  he  smarted  with  the 


g  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

fine  reproach  conveyed  in  the  tone  of  her  last  words ; 
but  she  appeared  able  to  guess  everything,  for  she 
reminded  him  that  she  had  not  had  to  wait  that 
morning  till  he  came  downstairs  to  know  what  had 
happened  above,  but  had  shown  him  at  the  moment 
how  she  had  been  conscious  of  it  an  hour  before, 
had  passed  on  her  side  the  same  tormented  night  as 
he,  and  had  had  to  exert  extraordinary  self-command 
not  to  rush  up  to  his  rooms  while  the  study  of  the 
open  packets  was  going  on.  "  You're  so  sensitively 
organised  and  you've  such  mysterious  powers  that 
you're  uncanny,"  Baron  declared. 

"  I  feel  what  takes  place  at  a  distance ;  that's  all." 

"  One  would  think  somebody  you  liked  was  in 
danger." 

"  I  told  you  that  that  was  what  was  present  to  me 
the  day  I  came  up  to  see  you." 

"  Oh,  but  you  don't  like  me  so  much  as  that," 
Baron  argued,  laughing. 

She  hesitated.     "  No,  I  don't  know  that  I  do." 

"  It  must  be  for  someone  else  —  the  other  person 
concerned.  The  other  day,  however,  you  wouldn't 
let  me  tell  you  that  person's  name." 

Mrs.  Ryves,  at  this,  rose  quickly.  "  I  don't  want 
to  know  it;  it's  none  of  my  business." 

"  No,  fortunately,  I  don't  think  it  is,"  Baron  re 
joined,  walking  with  her  along  the  Parade.  She  had 
Sidney  by  the  hand  now,  and  the  young  man  was  on 
the  other  side  of  her.  They  moved  toward  the  sta 
tion —  she  had  offered  to  go  part  of  the  way.  "But 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  9/ 

with  your  miraculous  gift  it's  a  wonder  you  haven't 
divined." 

"  I  only  divine  what  I  want,"  said  Mrs.  Ryves. 

"  That's  very  convenient !  "  exclaimed  Peter,  to 
whom  Sidney  had  presently  come  round  again. 
"  Only,  being  thus  in  the  dark,  it's  difficult  to  see 
your  motive  for  wishing  the  papers  destroyed." 

Mrs.  Ryves  meditated,  looking  fixedly  at  the 
ground.  "  I  thought  you  might  do  it  to  oblige  me." 

"  Does  it  strike  you  that  such  an  expectation, 
formed  in  such  conditions,  is  reasonable  ?  " 

Mrs.  Ryves  stopped  short,  and  this  time  she  turned 
on  him  the  clouded  clearness  of  her  eyes.  "  What 
do  you  mean  to  do  with  them  ?  " 

It  was  Peter  Baron's  turn  to  meditate,  which  he 
did,  on  the  empty  asphalt  of  the  Parade  (the  "  sea 
son,"  at  Dover,  was  not  yet),  where  their  shadows 
were  long  in  the  afternoon  light.  He  was  under 
such  a  charm  as  he  had  never  known,  and  he  wanted 
immensely  to  be  able  to  reply:  "  I'll  do  anything  you 
like  if  you'll  love  me."  These  words,  however, 
would  have  represented  a  responsibility  and  have 
constituted  what  was  vulgarly  termed  an  offer.  An 
offer  of  what  ?  he  quickly  asked  himself  here,  as  he 
had  already  asked  himself  after  making  in  spirit 
other  awkward  dashes  in  the  same  direction — of 
what  but  his  poverty,  his  obscurity,  his  attempts  that 
had  come  to  nothing,  his  abilities  for  which  there 
was  nothing  to  show  ?  Mrs.  Ryves  was  not  exactly 
a  success,  but  she  was  a  greater  success  than  Peter 


98  SIR   DOM1NICK.    FERRAND. 

Baron.  Poor  as  he  was  he  hated  the  sordid  (he 
knew  she  didn't  love  it),  and  he  felt  small  for  talking 
of  marriage.  Therefore  he  didn't  put  the  question 
in  the  words  it  would  have  pleased  him  most  to  hear 
himself  utter,  but  he  compromised,  with  an  angry 
young  pang,  and  said  to  her :  "  What  will  you  do  for 
me  if  I  put  an  end  to  them  ?  " 

She  shook  her  head  sadly —  it  was  always  her  pret 
tiest  movement.  "  I  can  promise  nothing  —  oh,  no,  I 
can't  promise !  We  must  part  now,"  she  added. 
"You'll  miss  your  train." 

He  looked  at  his  watch,  taking  the  hand  she  held 
out  to  him.  She  drew  it  away  quickly,  and  nothing 
then  was  left  him,  before  hurrying  to  the  station,  but 
to  catch  up  Sidney  and  squeeze  him  till  he  uttered  a 
little  shriek.  On  the  way  back  to  town  the  situation 
struck  him  as  grotesque. 


V. 


IT  tormented  him  so  the  next  morning  that  after 
threshing  it  out  a  little  further  he  felt  he  had  some 
thing  of  a  grievance.  Mrs.  Ryves's  intervention  had 
made  him  acutely  uncomfortable,  for  she  had  taken 
the  attitude  of  exerting  pressure  without,  it  appeared, 
recognising  on  his  part  an  equal  right.  She  had 
imposed  herself  as  an  influence,  yet  she  held  herself 
aloof  as  a  participant ;  there  were  things  she  looked 
to  him  to  do  for  her,  yet  she  could  tell  him  of  no 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  99 

good  that  would  come  to  him  from  the  doing.  She 
should  either  have  had  less  to  say  or  have  been  will 
ing  to  say  more,  and  he  asked  himself  why  he  should 
be  the  sport  of  her  moods  and  her  mysteries.  He 
perceived  her  knack  of  punctual  interference  to  be 
striking,  but  it  was  just  this  apparent  infallibility 
that  he  resented.  Why  didn't  she  set  up  at  once 
as  a  professional  clairvoyant  and  eke  out  her  little 
income  more  successfully  ?  In  purely  private  life 
such  a  gift  was  disconcerting ;  her  divinations,  her 
evasions  disturbed  at  any  rate  his  own  tranquillity. 

What  disturbed  it  still  further  was  that  he  received 
early  in  the  day  a  visit  from  Mr.  Locket,  who,  leav 
ing  him  under  no  illusion  as  to  the  grounds  of  such 
an  honour,  remarked  as  soon  as  he  had  got  into  the 
room  or  rather  while  he  still  panted  on  the  second 
flight  and  the  smudged  little  slavey  held  open  Baron's 
door,  that  he  had  taken  up  his  young  friend's  invita 
tion  to  look  at  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand's  letters  for 
himself.  Peter  drew  them  forth  with  a  promptitude 
intended  to  show  that  he  recognised  the  commercial 
character  of  the  call  and  without  attenuating  the 
inconsequence  of  this  departure  from  the  last  de 
termination  he  had  expressed  to  Mr.  Locket.  He 
showed  his  visitor  the  davenport  and  the  hidden 
recess,  and  he  smoked  a  cigarette,  humming  softly, 
with  a  sense  of  unwonted  advantage  and  triumph, 
while  the  cautious  editor  sat  silent  and  handled  the 
papers.  For  all  his  caution  Mr.  Locket  was  unable 
to  keep  a  warmer  light  out  of  his  judicial  eye  as  he 


IOO  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

said  to  Baron  at  last  with  sociable  brevity  —  a  tone 
that  took  many  things  for  granted :  "  I'll  take  them 
home  with  me  —  they  require  much  attention." 

The  young  man  looked  at  him  a  moment.  "  Do 
you  think  they're  genuine  ?  "  He  didn't  mean  to  be 
mocking,  he  meant  not  to  be ;  but  the  words  sounded 
so  to  his  own  ear,  and  he  could  see  that  they  pro 
duced  that  effect  on  Mr.  Locket. 

"  I  can't  in  the  least  determine.  I  shall  have  to 
go  into  them  at  my  leisure,  and  that's  why  I  ask  you 
to  lend  them  to  me." 

He  had  shuffled  the  papers  together  with  a  move 
ment  charged,  while  he  spoke,  with  the  air  of  being 
preliminary  to  that  of  thrusting  them  into  a  little 
black  bag  which  he  had  brought  with  him  and  which, 
resting  on  the  shelf  of  the  davenport,  struck  Peter, 
who  viewed  it  askance,  as  an  object  darkly  editorial. 
It  made  our  young  man,  somehow,  suddenly  appre 
hensive  ;  the  advantage  of  which  he  had  just  been 
conscious  was  about  to  be  transferred  by  a  quiet 
process  of  legerdemain  to  a  person  who  already  had 
advantages  enough.  Baron,  in  short,  felt  a  deep 
pang  of  anxiety ;  he  couldn't  have  said  why.  Mr. 
Locket  took  decidedly  too  many  things  for  granted, 
and  the  explorer  of  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand's  irregu 
larities  remembered  afresh  how  clear  he  had  been 
after  all  about  his  indisposition  to  traffic  in  them. 
He  asked  his  visitor  to  what  end  he  wished  to  re 
move  the  letters,  since  on  the  one  hand  there  was  no 
question  now  of  the  article  in  the  Promiscuous  which 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  IOI 

was  to  reveal  their  existence,  and  on  the  other  he 
himself,  as  their  owner,  had  a  thousand  insurmount 
able  scruples  about  putting  them  into  circulation. 

Mr.  Locket  looked  over  his  spectacles  as  over  the 
battlements  of  a  fortress.  "  I'm  not  thinking  of  the 
end  —  I'm  thinking  of  the  beginning.  A  few  glances 
have  assured  me  that  such  documents  ought  to  be 
submitted  to  some  competent  eye." 

"  Oh,  you  mustn't  show  them  to  anyone  !  "  Baron 
exclaimed. 

"You  may  think  me  presumptuous,  but  the  eye 
that  I  venture  to  allude  to  in  those  terms  —  " 

"Is  the  eye  now  fixed  so  terribly  on  me?"  Peter 
laughingly  interrupted.  "  Oh,  it  would  be  interest 
ing,  I  confess,  to  know  how  they  strike  a  man  of  your 
acuteness!"  It  had  occurred  to  him  that  by  such  a 
concession  he  might  endear  himself  to  a  literary  um 
pire  hitherto  implacable.  There  would  be  no  question 
of  his  publishing  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand,  but  he  might, 
in  due  acknowledgment  of  services  rendered,  form  the 
habit  of  publishing  Peter  Baron.  "  How  long  would 
it  be  your  idea  to  retain  them  ? "  he  inquired,  in  a 
manner  which,  he  immediately  became  aware,  was 
what  incited  Mr.  Locket  to  begin  stuffing  the  papers 
into  his  bag.  With  this  perception  he  came  quickly 
closer  and,  laying  his  hand  on  the  gaping  receptacle, 
lightly  drew  its  two  lips  together.  In  this  way  the 
two  men  stood  for  a  few  seconds,  touching,  almost  in 
the  attitude  of  combat,  looking  hard  into  each  other's 
eyes. 


IO2  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

The  tension  was  quickly  relieved  however  by  the 
surprised  flush  which  mantled  on  Mr.  Locket's  brow. 
He  fell  back  a  few  steps  with  an  injured  dignity  that 
might  have  been  a  protest  against  physical  violence. 
"  Really,  my  dear  young  sir,  your  attitude  is  tanta 
mount  to  an  accusation  of  intended  bad  faith.  Do 
you  think  I  want  to  steal  the  confounded  things?" 
In  reply  to  such  a  challenge  Peter  could  only  hastily 
declare  that  he  was  guilty  of  no  discourteous  sus 
picion  —  he  only  wanted  a  limit  named,  a  pledge  of 
every  precaution  against  accident.  Mr.  Locket  ad 
mitted  the  justice  of  the  demand,  assured  him  he 
would  restore  the  property  within  three  days,  and 
completed,  with  Peter's  assistance,  his  little  arrange 
ments  for  removing  it  discreetly.  When  he  was 
ready,  his  treacherous  reticule  distended  with  its 
treasures,  he  gave  a  lingering  look  at  the  inscrutable 
davenport.  "  It's  how  they  ever  got  into  that  thing 
that  puzzles  one's  brain  !  " 

"  There  was  some  concatenation  of  circumstances 
that  would  doubtless  seem  natural  enough  if  it  were 
explained,  but  that  one  would  have  to  remount  the 
stream  of  time  to  ascertain.  To  one  course  I  have 
definitely  made  up  my  mind  :  not  to  make  any  state 
ment  or  any  inquiry  at  the  shop.  I  simply  accept 
the  mystery,"  said  Peter,  rather  grandly. 

"  That  would  be  thought  a  cheap  escape  if  you 
were  to  put  it  into  a  story,"  Mr.  Locket  smiled. 

"  Yes,  I  shouldn't  offer  the  story  to  you.  I  shall 
be  impatient  till  I  see  my  papers  again,"  the  young 
man  called  out,  as  his  visitor  hurried  downstairs. 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  IO3 

That  evening,  by  the  last  delivery,  he  received, 
under  the  Dover  postmark,  a  letter  that  was  not  from 
Miss  Teagle.  It  was  a  slightly  confused  but  alto 
gether  friendly  note,  written  that  morning  after  break 
fast,  the  ostensible  purpose  of  which  was  to  thank 
him  for  the  amiability  of  his  visit,  to  express  regret 
at  any  appearance  the  writer  might  have  had  of 
meddling  with  what  didn't  concern  her,  and  to  let 
him  know  that  the  evening  before,  after  he  had  left 
her,  she  had  in  a  moment  of  inspiration  got  hold  of 
the  tail  of  a  really  musical  idea  —  a  perfect  accom 
paniment  for  the  song  he  had  so  kindly  given  her. 
She  had  scrawled,  as  a  specimen,  a  few  bars  at  the 
end  of  her  note,  mystic,  mocking  musical  signs  which 
had  no  sense  for  her  correspondent.  The  whole  let 
ter  testified  to  a  restless  but  rather  pointless  desire  to 
remain  in  communication  with  him.  In  answering  her, 
however,  which  he  did  that  night  before  going  to  bed, 
it  was  on  this  bright  possibility  of  their  collaboration, 
its  advantages  for  the  future  of  each  of  them,  that 
Baron  principally  expatiated.  He  spoke  of  this  future 
with  an  eloquence  of  which  he  would  have  defended 
the  sincerity,  and  drew  of  it  a  picture  extravagantly 
rich.  The  next  morning,  as  he  was  about  to  settle 
himself  to  tasks  for  some  time  terribly  neglected, 
with  a  sense  that  after  all  it  was  rather  a  relief  not  to 
be  sitting  so  close  to  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand,  who  had 
become  dreadfully  distracting  ;  at  the  very  moment  at 
which  he  habitually  addressed  his  preliminary  invoca 
tion  to  the  muse,  he  was  agitated  by  the  arrival  of  a 


IO4  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

telegram  which  proved  to  be  an  urgent  request  from 
Mr.  Locket  that  he  would  immediately  come  down 
and  see  him.  This  represented,  for  poor  Baron, 
whose  funds  were  very  low,  another  morning  sacri 
ficed,  but  somehow  it  didn't  even  occur  to  him  that 
he  might  impose  his  own  time  upon  the  editor  of  the 
Promiscuous,  the  keeper  of  the  keys  of  renown.  He 
had  some  of  the  plasticity  of  the  raw  contributor. 
He  gave  the  muse  another  holiday,  feeling  she  was 
really  ashamed  to  take  it,  and  in  course  of  time  found 
himself  in  Mr.  Locket's  own  chair  at  Mr.  Locket's 
own  table  —  so  much  nobler  an  expanse  than  the  slip 
pery  slope  of  the  davenport  —  considering  with  quick 
intensity,  in  the  white  flash  of  certain  words  just 
brought  out  by  his  host,  the  quantity  of  happiness, 
of  emancipation  that  might  reside  in  a  hundred 
pounds. 

Yes,  that  was  what  it  meant :  Mr.  Locket,  in  the 
twenty-four  hours,  had  discovered  so  much  in  Sir 
Dominick's  literary  remains  that  his  visitor  found  him 
primed  with  an  offer.  A  hundred  pounds  would  be 
paid  him  that  day,  that  minute,  and  no  questions 
would  be  either  asked  or  answered.  "  I  take  all  the 
risks,  I  take  all  the  risks,"  the  editor  of  the  Promis 
cuous  repeated.  The  letters  were  out  on  the  table, 
Mr,  Locket  was  on  the  hearthrug,  like  an  orator  on  a 
platform,  and  Peter,  under  the  influence  of  his  sudden 
ultimatum,  had  dropped,  rather  weakly,  into  the  seat 
which  happened  to  be  nearest  and  which,  as  he  be 
came  conscious  it  moved  on  a  pivot,  he  whirled  round 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  IO5 

so  as  to  enable  himself  to  look  at  his  tempter  with  an 
eye  intended  to  be  cold.  What  surprised  him  most 
was  to  find  Mr.  Locket  taking  exactly  the  line  about 
the  expediency  of  publication  which  he  would  have 
expected  Mr.  Locket  not  to  take.  "  Hush  it  all  up ; 
a  barren  scandal,  an  offence  that  can't  be  remedied, 
is  the  thing  in  the  world  that  least  justifies  an  air 
ing—  "  some  such  line  as  that  was  the  line  he  would 
have  thought  natural  to  a  man  whose  life  was  spent 
in  weighing  questions  of  propriety  and  who  had  only 
the  other  day  objected,  in  the  light  of  this  virtue,  to 
a  work  of  the  most  disinterested  art.  But  the  author 
of  that  incorruptible  masterpiece  had  put  his  finger 
on  the  place  in  saying  to  his  interlocutor  on  the  occa 
sion  of  his  last  visit  that,  if  given  to  the  world  in  the 
pages  of  the  Promiscuous,  Sir  Dominick's  aberrations 
would  sell  the  edition.  It  was  not  necessary  for  Mr. 
Locket  to  reiterate  to  his  young  friend  his  phrase 
about  their  making  a  sensation.  If  he  wished  to  pur 
chase  the  " rights,"  as  theatrical  people  said,  it  was  not 
to  protect  a  celebrated  name  or  to  lock  them  up  in  a 
cupboard.  That  formula  of  Baron's  covered  all  the 
ground,  and  one  edition  was  a  low  estimate  of  the 
probable  performance  of  the  magazine. 

Peter  left  the  letters  behind  him  and,  on  withdraw 
ing  from  the  editorial  presence,  took  a  long  walk  on 
the  Embankment.  His  impressions  were  at  war  with 
each  other  —  he  was  flurried  by  possibilities  of  which 
he  yet  denied  the  existence.  He  had  consented 
to  trust  Mr.  Locket  with  the  papers  a  day  or  two 


IO6  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

longer,  till  he  should  have  thought  out  the  terms  on 
which  he  might  —  in  the  event  of  certain  occurrences 
-  be  induced  to  dispose  of  them.  A  hundred  pounds 
were  not  this  gentleman's  last  word,  nor  perhaps  was 
mere  unreasoning  intractability  Peter's  own.  He 
sighed  as  he  took  no  note  of  the  pictures  made  by 
barges  —  sighed  because  it  all  might  mean  money. 
He  needed  money  bitterly ;  he  owed  it  in  disquieting 
quarters.  Mr.  Locket  had  put  it  before  him  that  he 
had  a  high  responsibility  —  that  he  might  vindicate 
the  disfigured  truth,  contribute  a  chapter  to  the  his 
tory  of  England.  "  You  haven't  a  right  to  suppress 
such  momentous  facts,"  the  hungry  little  editor  had 
declared,  thinking  how  the  series  (he  would  spread  it 
into  three  numbers)  would  be  the  talk  of  the  town. 
If  Peter  had  money  he  might  treat  himself  to  ardour, 
to  bliss.  Mr.  Locket  had  said,  no  doubt  justly 
enough,  that  there  were  ever  so  many  questions  one 
would  have  to  meet  should  one  venture  to  play  so 
daring  a  game.  These  questions,  embarrassments, 
dangers  —  the  danger,  for  instance,  of  the  cropping-up 
of  some  lurking  litigious  relative  —  he  would  take 
over  unreservedly  and  bear  the  brunt  of  dealing  with. 
It  was  to  be  remembered  that  the  papers  were  dis 
credited,  vitiated  by  their  childish  pedigree ;  such  a 
preposterous  origin, -suggesting,  as  he  had  hinted  be 
fore,  the  feeble  ingenuity  of  a  third-rate  novelist,  was 
a  thing  he  should  have  to  place  himself  at  the  positive 
disadvantage  of  being  silent  about.  He  would  rather 
give  no  account  of  the  matter  at  all  than  expose  him- 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  IO/ 

self  to  the  ridicule  that  such  a  story  would  infallibly 
excite.  Couldn't  one  see  them  in  advance,  the  clever, 
taunting  things  the  daily  and  weekly  papers  would 
say  ?  Peter  Baron  had  his  guileless  side,  but  he  felt, 
as  he  worried  with  a  stick  that  betrayed  him  the 
granite  parapets  of  the  Thames,  that  he  was  not  such 
a  fool  as  not  to  know  how  Mr.  Locket  would  "work" 
the  mystery  of  his  marvellous  find.  Nothing  could 
help  it  on  better  with  the  public  than  the  impenetra 
bility  of  the  secret  attached  to  it.  If  Mr.  Locket 
should  only  be  able  to  kick  up  dust  enough  over  the 
circumstances  that  had  guided  his  hand  his  fortune 
would  literally  be  made.  Peter  thought  a  hundred 
pounds  a  low  bid,  yet  he  wondered  how  the  Promis 
cuous  could  bring  itself  to  offer  such  a  sum  —  so  large 
it  loomed  in  the  light  of  literary  remuneration  as 
hitherto  revealed  to  our  young  man.  The  explana 
tion  of  this  anomaly  was  of  course  that  the  editor 
shrewdly  saw  a  dozen  ways  of  getting  his  money  back. 
There  would  be  in  the  "sensation,"  at  a  later  stage, 
the  making  of  a  book  in  large  type  —  the  book  of  the 
hour ;  and  the  profits  of  this  scandalous  volume  or, 
if  one  preferred  the  name,  this  reconstruction,  before 
an  impartial  posterity,  of  a  great  historical  humbug, 
the  sum  "  down,"  in  other  words,  that  any  lively  pub 
lisher  would  give  for  it,  figured  vividly  in  Mr.  Locket's 
calculations.  It  was  therefore  altogether  an  oppor 
tunity  of  dealing  at  first  hand  with  the  lively  publisher 
that  Peter  was  invited  to  forego.  Peter  gave  a 
masterful  laugh,  rejoicing  in  his  heart  that,  on  the 


IO8  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

spot,  in  the  repaire  he  had  lately  quitted,  he  had  not 
been  tempted  by  a  figure  that  would  have  approxi 
mately  represented  the  value  of  his  property.  It  was 
a  good  job,  he  mentally  added  as  he  turned  his  face 
homeward,  that  there  was  so  little  likelihood  of  his 
having  to  struggle  with  that  particular  pressure. 


VI. 


WHEN,  half  an  hour  later,  he  approached  Jersey 
Villas,  he  noticed  that  the  house-door  was  open ; 
then,  as  he  reached  the  gate,  saw  it  make  a  frame 
for  an  unexpected  presence.  Mrs.  Ryves,  in  her 
bonnet  and  jacket,  looked  out  from  it  as  if  she  were 
expecting  something  —  as  if  she  had  been  passing 
to  and  fro  to  watch.  Yet  when  he  had  expressed 
to  her  that  it  was  a  delightful  welcome  she  replied 
that  she  had  only  thought  there  might  possibly  be 
a  cab  in  sight.  He  offered  to  go  and  look  for  one, 
upon  which  it  appeared  that  after  all  she  was  not,  as 
yet  at  least,  in  need.  He  went  back  with  her  into 
her  sitting-room,  where  she  let  him  know  that  within 
a  couple  of  days  she  had  seen  clearer  what  was  best ; 
she  had  determined  to  quit  Jersey  Villas  and  had 
come  up  to  take  away  her  things,  which  she  had  just 
been  packing  and  getting  together. 

"  I  wrote  you  last  night  a  charming  letter  in 
answer  to  yours,"  Baron  said.  "  You  didn't  mention 
in  yours  that  you  were  coming  up." 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  IOQ 

"  It  wasn't  your  answer  that  brought  me.  It 
hadn't  arrived  when  I  came  away." 

"  You'll  see  when  you  get  back  that  my  letter  is 
charming." 

"  I  daresay."  Baron  had  observed  that  the  room 
was  not,  as  she  had  intimated,  in  confusion  —  Mrs. 
Ryves's  preparations  for  departure  were  not  striking. 
She  saw  him  look  round  and,  standing  in  front  of  the 
fireless  grate  with  her  hands  behind  her,  she  sud 
denly  asked  :  "  Where  have  you  come  from  now  ?  " 

"  From  an  interview  with  a  literary  friend." 

"  What  are  you  concocting  between  you  ?  " 

"  Nothing  at  all.  We've  fallen  out  —  we  don't 
agree." 

"Is  he  a  publisher?" 

"  He's  an  editor." 

"  Well,  I'm  glad  you  don't  agree.  I  don't  know 
what  he  wants,  but,  whatever  it  is,  don't  do  it." 

"  He  must  do  what  /  want!  "  said  Baron. 

"And  what's  that?" 

"  Oh,  I'll  tell  you  when  he  has  done  it!  "  Baron 
begged  her  to  let  him  hear  the  "  musical  idea  "  she 
had  mentioned  in  her  letter;  on  which  she  took  off 
her  hat  and  jacket  and,  seating  herself  at  her  piano, 
gave  him,  with  a  sentiment  of  which  the  very  first 
notes  thrilled  him,  the  accompaniment  of  his  song. 
She  phrased  the  words  with  her  sketchy  sweetness, 
and  he  sat  there  as  if  he  had  been  held  in  a  velvet 
vise,  throbbing  with  the  emotion,  irrecoverable  ever 
after  in  its  freshness,  of  the  young  artist  in  the 


IIO  SIR   DOMINICK   FERRAND. 

presence  for  the  first  time  of  "production"  —the 
proofs  of  his  book,  the  hanging  of  his  picture,  the 
rehearsal  of  his  play.  When  she  had  finished  he 
asked  again  for  the  same  delight,  and  then  for  more 
music  and  for  more  ;  it  did  him  such  a  world  of  good, 
kept  him  quiet  and  safe,  smoothed  out  the  creases  of 
his  spirit.  She  dropped  her  own  experiments  and 
gave  him  immortal  things,  and  he  lounged  there, 
pacified  and  charmed,  feeling  the  mean  little  room 
grow  large  and  vague  and  happy  possibilities  come 
back.  Abruptly,  at  the  piano,  she  called  out  to  him  : 
"  Those  papers  of  yours  —  the  letters  you  found  — 
are  not  in  the  house  ?  " 

"  No,  they're  not  in  the  house." 

11 1  was  sure  of  it!  No  matter— it's  all  right!" 
she  added.  She  herself  was  pacified  —  trouble  was 
a  false  note.  Later  he  was  on  the  point  of  asking 
her  how  she  knew  the  objects  she  had  mentioned 
were  not  in  the  house ;  but  he  let  it  pass.  The 
subject  was  a  profitless  riddle  —  a  puzzle  that  grew 
grotesquely  bigger,  like  some  monstrosity  seen  in  the 
darkness,  as  one  opened  one's  eyes  to  it.  He  closed 
his  eyes  —  he  wanted  another  vision.  Besides,  she 
had  shown  him  that  she  had  extraordinary  senses  — 
her  explanation  would  have  been  stranger  than  the 
fact.  Moreover  they  had  other  things  to  talk  about, 
in  particular  the  question  of  her  putting  off  her 
return  to  Dover  till  the  morrow  and  dispensing  mean 
while  with  the  valuable  protection  of  Sidney.  This 
was  indeed  but  another  face  of  the  question  of  her 


SIR   DOMINICK    FERRAND.  I  I  I 

dining  with  him  somewhere  that  evening  (where 
else  should  she  dine?)  —  accompanying  him,  for  in 
stance,  just  for  an  hour  of  Bohemia,  in  their  deadly 
respectable  lives,  to  a  jolly,  little  place  in  Soho.  Mrs. 
Ryves  declined  to  have  her  life  abused,  but  in  fact, 
at  the  proper  moment,  at  the  jolly  little  place,  to 
which  she  did  accompany  him  —  it  dealt  in  macaroni 
and  Chianti  —  the  pair  put  their  elbows  on  the 
crumpled  cloth  and,  face  to  face,  with  their  little 
emptied  coffee-cups  pushed  away  and  the  young 
man's  cigarette  lighted  by  her  command,  became 
increasingly  confidential.  They  went  afterwards  to 
the  theatre,  in  cheap  places,  and  came  home  in 
"  busses  "  and  under  umbrellas. 

On  the  way  back  Peter  Baron  turned  something 
over  in  his  mind  as  he  had  never  turned  anything 
before ;  it  was  the  question  of  whether,  at  the  end, 
she  would  let  him  come  into  her  sitting-room  for  five 
minutes.  He  felt  on  this  point  a  passion  of  suspense 
and  impatience,  and  yet  for  what  would  it  be  but  to 
tell  her  how  poor  he  was  ?  This  was  literally  the 
moment  to  say  it,  so  supremely  depleted  had  the 
hour  of  Bohemia  left  him.  Even  Bohemia  was  too 
expensive,  and  yet  in  the  course  of  the  day  his  whole 
temper  on  the  subject  of  certain  fitnesses  had  changed. 
At  Jersey  Villas  (it  was  near  midnight,  and  Mrs.  Ryves, 
scratching  a  light  for  her  glimmering  taper,  had  said  : 
"  Oh,  yes,  come  in  for  a  minute  if  you  like !  "),  in  her 
precarious  parlour,  which  was  indeed,  after  the  bril 
liances  of  the  evening,  a  return  to  ugliness  and  truth, 


112  SIR    DOM1NICK    FERRAND. 

she  let  him  stand  while  he  explained  that  he  had  cer 
tainly  everything  in  the  way  of  fame  and  fortune 
still  to  gain,  but  that  youth  and  love  and  faith  and 
energy  —  to  say  nothing  of  her  supreme  clearness  — 
were  all  on  his  side.  Why,  if  one's  beginnings  were 
rough,  should  one  add  to  the  hardness  of  the  condi 
tions  by  giving  up  the  dream  which,  if  she  would  only 
hear  him  out,  would  make  just  the  blessed  difference? 
Whether  Mrs.  Ryves  heard  him  out  or  not  is  a  cir 
cumstance  as  to  which  this  chronicle  happens  to  be 
silent ;  but  after  he  had  got  possession  of  both  her 
hands  and  breathed  into  her  face  for  a  moment  all 
the  intensity  of  his  tenderness  —  in  the  relief  and  joy 
of  utterance  he  felt  it  carry  him  like  a  rising  flood  — 
she  checked  him  with  better  reasons,  with  a  cold, 
sweet  afterthought  in  which  he  felt  there  was  some 
thing  deep.  Her  procrastinating  head-shake  was 
prettier  than  ever,  yet  it  had  never  meant  so  many 
fears  and  pains  —  impossibilities  and  memories,  inde 
pendences  and  pieties,  and  a  sort  of  uncomplaining  ache 
for  the  ruin  of  a  friendship  that  had  been  happy.  She 
had  liked  him  —  if  she  hadn't  she  wouldn't  have  let 
him  think  so!  —  but  she  protested  that  she  had  not, 
in  the  odious  vulgar  sense,  "  encouraged  "  him.  More 
over  she  couldn't  talk  of  such  things  in  that  place,  at 
that  hour,  and  she  begged  mm  not  to  make  her  regret 
her  good-nature  in  staying  over.  There  were  pecu 
liarities  in  her  position,  considerations  insurmountable. 
She  got  rid  of  him  with  kind  and  confused  words, 
and  afterwards,  in  the  dull,  humiliated  night,  he  felt 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  113 

that  he  had  been  put  in  his  place.  Women  in  her 
situation,  women  who  after  having  really  loved  and 
lost,  usually  lived  on  into  the  new  dawns  in  which  old 
ghosts  steal  away.  But  there  was  something  in  his 
whimsical  neighbour  that  struck  him  as  terribly  in 
vulnerable. 


VII. 


"  I'VE  had  time  to  look  a  little  further  into  what 
we're  prepared  to  do,  and  I  find  the  case  is  one  in 
which  I  should  consider  the  advisability  of  going  to 
an  extreme  length,"  said  Mr.  Locket.  Jersey  Villas 
the  next  morning  had  had  the  privilege  of  again 
receiving  the  editor  of  the  Promiscuous,  and  he  sat 
once  more  at  the  davenport,  where  the  bone  of  con 
tention,  in  the  shape  of  a  large,  loose  heap  of  papers 
that  showed  how  much  they  had  been  handled,  was 
placed  well  in  view.  "  We  shall  see  our  way  to  offer 
ing  you  three  hundred,  but  we  shouldn't,  I  must 
positively  assure  you,  see  it  a  single  step  further." 

Peter  Baron,  in  his  dressing-gown  and  slippers, 
with  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  crept  softly  about  the 
room,  repeating,  below  his  breath  and  with  inflections 
that  for  his  own  sake  he  endeavoured  to  make  humor 
ous  :  "  Three  hundred  —  three  hundred."  His  state 
of  mind  was  far  from  hilarious,  for  he  felt  poor  and 
sore  and  disappointed ;  but  he  wanted  to  prove  to 
himself  that  he  was  gallant — was  made,  in  general 
and  in  particular,  of  undiscourageable  stuff.  The 


I  14  SIR    DOM1NICK    FERRAND. 

first  thing  he  had  been  aware  of  on  stepping  into  his 
front  room  was  that  a  four-wheeled  cab,  with  Mrs. 
Ryves's  luggage  upon  it,  stood  at  the  door  of  No.  3. 
Permitting  himself,  behind  his  curtain,  a  pardonable 
peep,  he  saw  the  mistress  of  his  thoughts  come  out 
of  the  house,  attended  by  Mrs.  Bundy,  and  take  her 
place  in  the  modest  vehicle.  After  this  his  eyes 
rested  for  a  long  time  on  the  sprigged  cotton  back  of 
the  landlady,  who  kept  bobbing  at  the  window  of  the 
cab  an  endlessly  moralising  old  head.  Mrs.  Ryves 
had  really  taken  flight  —  he  had  made  Jersey  Villas 
impossible  for  her  —  but  Mrs.  Bundy,  with  a  magna 
nimity  unprecedented  in  the  profession,  seemed  to 
express  a  belief  in  the  purity  of  her  motives.  Baron 
felt  that  his  own  separation  had  been,  for  the  present 
at  least,  effected ;  every  instinct  of  delicacy  prompted 
him  to  stand  back. 

Mr.  Locket  talked  a  long  time,  and  Peter  Baron 
listened  and  waited.  He  reflected  that  his  willingness 
to  listen  would  probably  excite  hopes  in  his  visitor  — 
hopes  which  he  himself  was  ready  to  contemplate 
without  a  scruple.  He  felt  no  pity  for  Mr.  Locket 
and  had  no  consideration  for  his  suspense  or  for  his 
possible  illusions ;  he  only  felt  sick  and  forsaken  and 
in  want  of  comfort  and  of  money.  Yet  it  was  a  kind 
of  outrage  to  his  dignity  to  have  the  knife  held  to  his 
throat,  and  he  was  irritated  above  all  by  the  ground 
on  which  Mr.  Locket  put  the  question  —  the  ground 
of  a  service  rendered  to  historical  truth.  It  might 
be  —  he  wasn't  clear ;  it  might  be  —  the  question 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  I  15 

was  deep,  too  deep,  probably,  for  his  wisdom  ;  at  any 
rate  he  had  to  control  himself  not  to  interrupt  angrily 
such  dry,  interested  palaver,  the  false  voice  of  com 
merce  and  of  cant.  He  stared  tragically  out  of  the 
window  and  saw  the  stupid  rain  begin  to  fall ;  the 
day  was  duller  even  than  his  own  soul,  and  Jersey 
Villas  looked  so  sordidly  hideous  that  it  was  no 
wonder  Mrs.  Ryves  couldn't  endure  them.  Hideous 
as  they  were  he  should  have  to  tell  Mrs.  Bundy  in 
the  course  of  the  day  that  he  was  obliged  to  seek 
humbler  quarters.  Suddenly  he  interrupted  Mr. 
Locket ;  he  observed  to  him  :  "  I  take  it  that  if  I 
should  make  you  this  concession  the  hospitality  of 
the  Promiscuous  would  be  by  that  very  fact  unre 
strictedly  secured  to  me." 

Mr.  Locket  stared.  "  Hospitality  —  secured  ?  "  He 
thumbed  the  proposition  as  if  it  were  a  hard  peach. 

"  I  mean  that  of  course  you  wouldn't  —  in  courtsey, 
in  gratitude  —  keep  on  declining  my  things." 

"  I  should  give  them  my  best  attention  —  as  I've 
always  done  in  the  past." 

Peter  Baron  hesitated.  It  was  a  case  in  which 
there  would  have  seemed  to  be  some  chance  for  the 
ideally  shrewd  aspirant  in  such  an  advantage  as  he 
possessed ;  but  after  a  moment  the  blood  rushed  into 
his  face  with  the  shame  of  the  idea  of  pleading  for 
his  productions  in  the  name  of  anything  but  their 
merit.  It  was  as  if  he  had  stupidly  uttered  evil  of 
them.  Nevertheless  he  added  the  interrogation : 
"Would  you  for  instance  publish  my  little  story  ?  " 


Il6  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

"  The  one  I  read  (and  objected  to  some  features 
of)  the  other  day?  Do  you  mean  —  a  —  with  the 
alteration  ?  "  Mr.  Locket  continued. 

"  Oh,  no,  I  mean  utterly  without  it.  The  pages 
you  want  altered  contain,  as  I  explained  to  you  very 
lucidly,  I  think,  the  very  raison  d'etre  of  the  work, 
and  it  would  therefore,  it  seems  to  me,  be  an  imbe 
cility  of  the  first  magnitude  to  cancel  them."  Peter 
had  really  renounced  all  hope  that  his  critic  would 
understand  what  he  meant,  but,  under  favour  of  cir 
cumstances,  he  couldn't  forbear  to  taste  the  luxury, 
which  probably  never  again  would  come  within  his 
reach,  of  being  really  plain,  for  one  wild  moment, 
with  an  editor. 

Mr.  Locket  gave  a  constrained  smile.  "  Think  of 
the  scandal,  Mr.  Baron." 

"  But  isn't  this  other  scandal  just  what  you're 
going  in  for  ?  " 

"  It  will  be  a  great  public  service." 

"  You  mean  it  will  be  a  big  scandal,  whereas  my 
poor  story  would  be  a  very  small  one,  and  that  it's 
only  out  of  a  big  one  that  money's  to  be  made." 

Mr.  Locket  got  up  —  he  too  had  his  dignity  to  vin 
dicate.  "  Such  a  sum  as  I  offer  you  ought  really  to 
be  an  offset  against  all  claims." 

"Very  good  —  I  don't  mean  to  make  any,  since  you 
don't  really  care  for  what  I  write.  I  take  note  of 
your  offer,"  Peter  pursued,  "  and  I  engage  to  give 
you  to-night  (in  a  few  words  left  by  my  own  hand  at 
your  house)  my  absolutely  definite  and  final  reply." 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  I  I/ 

Mr.  Locket's  movements,  as  he  hovered  near  the 
relics  of  the  eminent  statesman,  were  those  of  some 
feathered  parent  fluttering  over  a  threatened  nest. 
If  he  had  brought  his  huddled  brood  back  with  him 
this  morning  it  was  because  he  had  felt  sure  enough 
of  closing  the  bargain  to  be  able  to  be  graceful.  He 
kept  a  glittering  eye  on  the  papers  and  remarked 
that  he  was  afraid  that  before  leaving  them  he  must 
elicit  some  assurance  that  in  the  meanwhile  Peter 
would  not  place  them  in  any  other  hands.  Peter,  at 
this,  gave  a  laugh  of  harsher  cadence  than  he  in 
tended,  asking,  justly  enough,  on  what  privilege  his 
visitor  rested  such  a  demand  and  why  he  himself 
was  disqualified  from  offering  his  wares  to  the 
highest  bidder.  "  Surely  you  wouldn't  hawk  such 
things  about  ?"  cried  Mr.  Locket;  but  before  Baron 
had  time  to  retort  cynically  he  added:  "  I'll  publish 
your  little  story." 

"  Oh,  thank  you  !  " 

"I'll  publish  anything  you'll  send  me,"  Mr.  Locket 
continued,  as  he  went  out.  Peter  had  before  this 
virtually  given  his  word  that  for  the  letters  he  would 
treat  only  with  the  Promiscuous. 

The  young  man  passed,  during  a  portion  of  the 
rest  of  the  day,  the  strangest  hours  of  his  life.  Yet 
he  thought  of  them  afterwards  not  as  a  phase  of 
temptation,  though  they  had  been  full  of  the  emotion 
that  accompanies  an  intense  vision  of  alternatives. 
The  struggle  was  already  over;  it  seemed  to  him  that, 
poor  as  he  was,  he  was  not  poor  enough  to  take  Mr. 


Il8  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

Locket's  money.  He  looked  at  the  opposed  courses 
with  the  self-possession  of  a  man  who  has  chosen, 
but  this  self-possession  was  in  itself  the  most  ex 
quisite  of  excitements.  It  was  really  a  high  revul 
sion  and  a  sort  of  noble  pity.  He  seemed  indeed  to 
have  his  finger  upon  the  pulse  of  history  and  to  be 
in  the  secret  of  the  gods.  He  had  them  all  in  his 
hand,  the  tablets  and  the  scales  and  the  torch.  He 
couldn't  keep  a  character  together,  but  he  might 
easily  pull  one  to  pieces.  That  would  be  "  creative 
work"  of  a  kind  —  he  could  reconstruct  the  charac 
ter  less  pleasingly,  could  show  an  unknown  side  of 
it.  Mr.  Locket  had  had  a  good  deal  to  say  about 
responsibility ;  and  responsibility  in  truth  sat  there 
with  him  all  the  morning,  while  he  revolved  in  his 
narrow  cage  and,  watching  the  crude  spring  rain  on 
the  windows,  thought  of  the  dismalness  to  which,  at 
Dover,  Mrs.  Ryves  was  going  back.  This  influence 
took  in  fact  the  form,  put  on  the  physiognomy  of  poor 
Sir  Dominick  Ferrand  ;  he  was  at  present  as  per 
ceptible  in  it,  as  coldly  and  strangely  personal,  as  if 
he  had  been  a  haunting  ghost  and  had  risen  beside 
his  own  old  hearthstone.  Our  friend  was  accustomed 
to  his  company  and  indeed  had  spent  so  many  hours 
in  it  of  late,  following  him  up  at  the  museum  and 
comparing  his  different  portraits,  engravings  and 
lithographs,  in  which  there  seemed  to  be  conscious, 
pleading  eyes  for  the  betrayer,  that  their  queer  in 
timacy  had  grown  as  close  as  an  embrace.  Sir  Dom 
inick  was  very  dumb,  but  he  was  terrible  in  his 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERKAND.  I  19 

dependence,  and  Peter  would  not  have  encouraged 
him  by  so  much  curiosity  nor  reassured  him  by  so 
much  deference  had  it  not  been  for  the  young  man's 
complete  acceptance  of  the  impossibility  of  getting  out 
of  a  tight  place  by  exposing  an  individual.  It  didn't 
matter  that  the  individual  was  dead ;  it  didn't  matter 
that  he  was  dishonest.  Peter  felt  him  sufficiently 
alive  to  suffer;  he  perceived  the  rectification  of 
history  so  conscientiously  desired  by  Mr.  Locket  to 
be  somehow  for  himself  not  an  imperative  task.  It 
had  come  over  him  too  definitely  that  in  a  case  where 
one's  success  was  to  hinge  upon  an  act  of  extradi 
tion  it  would  minister  most  to  an  easy  conscience 
to  let  the  success  go.  No,  no  —  even  should  he  be 
starving  he  couldn't  make  money  out  of  Sir  Dom- 
inick's  disgrace.  He  was  almost  surprised  at  the 
violence  of  the  horror  with  which,  as  he  shuffled 
mournfully  about,  the  idea  of  any  such  profit  in 
spired  him.  What  was  Sir  Dominick  to  him  after 
all  ?  He  wished  he  had  never  come  across  him. 

In  one  of  his  brooding  pauses  at  the  window  —  the 
window  out  of  which  never  again  apparently  should 
he  see  Mrs.  Ryves  glide  across  the  little  garden  with 
the  step  for  which  he  had  liked  her  from  the  first  — 
he  became  aware  that  the  rain  was  about  to  intermit 
and  the  sun  to  make  some  grudging  amends.  This 
was  a  sign  that  he  might  go  out ;  he  had  a  vague 
perception  that  there  were  things  to  be  done.  He 
had  work  to  look  for,  and  a  cheaper  lodging,  and  a 
new  idea  (every  idea  he  had  ever  cherished  had  left 


I2O  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

him),  in  addition  to  which  the  promised  little  word 
was  to  be  dropped  at  Mr.  Locket's  door.  He  looked 
at  his  watch  and  was  surprised  at  the  hour,  for  he 
had  nothing  but  a  heartache  to  show  for  so  much 
time.  He  would  have  to  dress  quickly,  but  as  he 
passed  to  his  bedroom  his  eye  was  caught  by  the 
little  pyramid  of  letters  which  Mr.  Locket  had  con 
structed  on  his  davenport.  They  startled  him  and, 
staring  at  them,  he  stopped  for  an  instant,  half- 
amused,  half-annoyed  at  their  being  still  in  existence. 
He  had  so  completely  destroyed  them  in  spirit  that 
he  had  taken  the  act  for  granted,  and  he  was  now 
reminded  of  the  orderly  stages  of  which  an  intention 
must  consist  to  be  sincere.  Baron  went  at  the  papers 
with  all  his  sincerity,  and  at  his  empty  grate  (where 
there  lately  had  been  no  fire  and  he  had  only  to 
remove  a  horrible  ornament  of  tissue-paper  dear  to 
Mrs.  Bundy)  he  burned  the  collection  with  infinite 
method.  It  made  him  feel  happier  to  watch  the 
worst  pages  turn  to  illegible  ashes  —  if  happiness 
be  the  right  word  to  apply  to  his  sense,  in  the  proc 
ess,  of  something  so  crisp  and  crackling  that  it  sug 
gested  the  death-rustle  of  bank-notes. 

When  ten  minutes  later  he  came  back  into  his 
sitting-room,  he  seemed  to  himself  oddly,  unex 
pectedly  in  the  presence  of  a  bigger  view.  It  was  as 
if  some  interfering  mass  had  been  so  displaced  that 
he  could  see  more  sky  and  more  country.  Yet  the 
opposite  houses  were  naturally  still  there,  and  if  the 
grimy  little  place  looked  lighter  it  was  doubtless  only 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  121 

because  the  rain  had  indeed  stopped  and  the  sun 
was  pouring  in.  Peter  went  to  the  window  to  open 
it  to  the  altered  air,  and  in  doing  so  beheld  at  the 
garden  gate  the  humble  "  growler  "  in  which  a  few 
hours  before  he  had  seen  Mrs.  Ryves  take  her 
departure.  It  was  unmistakable  —  he  remembered 
the  knock-kneed  white  horse ;  but  this  made  the 
fact  that  his  friend's  luggage  no  longer  surmounted 
it  only  the  more  mystifying.  Perhaps  the  cabman 
had  already  removed  the  luggage  —  he  was  now  on 
his  box  smoking  the  short  pipe  that  derived  relish 
from  inaction  paid  for.  As  Peter  turned  into  the 
room  again  his  ears  caught  a  knock  at  his  own  door, 
a  knock  explained,  as  soon  as  he  had  responded,  by 
the  hard  breathing  of  Mrs.  Bundy. 

"  Please,  sir,  it's  to  say  she've  come  back." 

"What  has  she  come  back  for?"  Baron's  ques 
tion  sounded  ungracious,  but  his  heartache  had  given 
another  throb,  and  he  felt  a  dread  of  another  wound. 
It  was  like  a  practical  joke. 

"  I  think  it's  for  you,  sir,"  said  Mrs.  Bundy. 
"  She'll  see  you  for  a  moment,  if  you'll  be  so  good, 
in  the  old  place." 

Peter  followed  his  hostess  downstairs,  and  Mrs. 
Bundy  ushered  him,  with  her  company  flourish,  into 
the  apartment  she  had  fondly  designated. 

"  I  went  away  this  morning,  and  I've  only  re 
turned  for  an  instant,"  said  Mrs.  Ryves,  as  soon  as 
Mrs.  Bundy  had  closed  the  door.  He  saw  that  she 
was  different  now  ;  something  had  happened  that 
had  made  her  indulgent. 


122  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

"  Have  you  been  all  the  way  to  Dover  and  back  ?  " 

"  No,  but  I've  been  to  Victoria.  I've  left  my  lug 
gage  there  —  I've  been  driving  about." 

"  I  hope  you've  enjoyed  it." 

"  Very  much.     I've  been  to  see  Mr.  Morrish." 

"  Mr.  Morrish  ?  " 

"  The  musical  publisher.  I  showed  him  our  song. 
I  played  it  for  him,  and  he's  delighted  with  it.  He 
declares  it's  just  the  thing.  He  has  given  me  fifty 
pounds.  I  think  he  believes  in  us,"  Mrs.  Ryves 
went  on,  while  Baron  stared  at  the  wonder  —  too 
sweet  to  be  safe,  it  seemed  to  him  as  yet  —  of  her 
standing  there  again  before  him  and  speaking  of 
what  they  had  in  common.  "  Fifty  pounds !  fifty 
pounds!  "  she  exclaimed,  fluttering  at  him  her  happy 
cheque.  She  had  come  back,  the  first  thing,  to  tell 
him,  and  of  course  his  share  of  the  money  would  be 
the  half.  She  was  rosy,  jubilant,  natural,  she  chat 
tered  like  a  happy  woman.  She  said  they  must  do 
more,  ever  so  much  more.  Mr.  Morrish  had  practi 
cally  promised  he  would  take  anything  that  was  as 
good  as  that.  She  had  kept  her  cab  because  she 
was  going  to  Dover;  she  couldn't  leave  the  others 
alone.  It  was  a  vehicle  infirm  and  inert,  but  Baron, 
after  a  little,  appreciated  its  pace,  for  she  had  con 
sented  to  his  getting  in  with  her  and  driving,  this 
time  in  earnest,  to  Victoria.  She  had  only  come  to 
tell  him  the  good  news  —  she  repeated  this  assurance 
more  than  once.  They  talked  of  it  so  profoundly 
that  it  drove  everything  else  for  the  time  out  of  his 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  123 

head  —  his  duty  to  Mr.  Locket,  the  remarkable  sac 
rifice  he  had  just  achieved,  and  even  the  odd  coinci 
dence,  matching  with  the  oddity  of  all  the  others,  of 
her  having  reverted  to  the  house  again,  as  if  with 
one  of  her  famous  divinations,  at  the  very  moment 
the  trumpery  papers,  the  origin  really  of  their  inti 
macy,  had  ceased  to  exist.  But  she,  on  her  side,  also 
had  evidently  forgotten  the  trumpery  papers  :  she 
never  mentioned  them  again,  and  Peter  Baron  never 
boasted  of  what  he  had  done  with  them.  He  was 
silent  for  a  while,  from  curiosity  to  see  if  her  fine 
nerves  had  really  given  her  a  hint ;  and  then  later, 
when  it  came  to  be  a  question  of  his  permanent  atti 
tude,  he  was  silent,  prodigiously,  religiously,  tremu 
lously  silent,  in  consequence  of  an  extraordinary 
conversation  that  he  had  with  her. 

This  conversation  took  place  at  Dover,  when  he 
went  down  to  give  her  the  money  for  which,  at  Mr. 
Morrish's  bank,  he  had  exchanged  the  cheque  she 
had  left  with  him.  That  cheque,  or  rather  certain 
things  it  represented,  had  made  somehow  all  the 
difference  in  their  relations.  The  difference  was 
huge,  and  Baron  could  think  of  nothing  but  this 
confirmed  vision  of  their  being  able  to  work  fruitfully 
together  that  would  account  for  so  rapid  a  change. 
She  didn't  talk  of  impossibilities  now  —  she  didn't 
seem  to  want  to  stop  him  off ;  only  when,  the  day 
following  his  arrival  at  Dover  with  the  fifty  pounds 
(he  had  after  all  to  agree  to  share  them  with  her  — 
he  couldn't  expect  her  to  take  a  present  of  money 


124  SIR    DOM1NICK    FERRAND. 

from  him),  he  returned  to  the  question  over  which 
they  had  had  their  little  scene  the  night  they  dined 
together  —  on  this  occasion  (he  had  brought  a  port 
manteau  and  he  was  staying)  she  mentioned  that 
there  was  something  very  particular  she  had  it  on 
her  conscience  to  tell  him  before  letting  him  commit 
himself.  There  dawned  in  her  face  as  she  approached 
the  subject  a  light  of  warning  that  frightened  him ; 
it  was  charged  with  something  so  strange  that  for 
an  instant  he  held  his  breath.  This  flash  of  ugly 
possibilities  passed  however,  and  it  was  with  the 
gesture  of  taking  still  tenderer  possession  of  her, 
checked  indeed  by  the  grave,  important  way  she  held 
up  a  finger,  that  he  answered :  "  Tell  me  everything 
-  tell  me  !  " 

"  You  must  know  what  I  am  —  who  I  am ;  you 
must  know  especially  what  I'm  not !  There's  a  name 
for  it,  a  hideous,  cruel  name.  It's  not  my  fault ! 
Others  have  known,  I've  had  to  speak  of  it  —  it  has 
made  a  great  difference  in  my  life.  Surely  you  must 
have  guessed  !  "  she  went  on,  with  the  thinnest  quaver 
of  irony,  letting  him  now  take  her  hand,  which  felt 
as  cold  as  her  hard  duty.  "  Don't  you  see  I've  no 
belongings,  no  relations,  no  friends,  nothing  at  all,  in 
all  the  world,  of  my  own  ?  I  was  only  a  poor  girl." 

"  A  poor  girl  ?  "  Baron  was  mystified,  touched, 
distressed,  piecing  dimly  together  what  she  meant, 
but  feeling,  in  a  great  surge  of  pity,  that  it  was  only 
something  more  to  love  her  for. 

"  My  mother  —  my  poor  mother,"  said  Mrs.  Ryves. 


SIR    DOM1NICK    FERRAND.  125 

She  paused  with  this,  and  through  gathering  tears 
her  eyes  met  his  as  if  to  plead  with  him  to  under 
stand.  He  understood,  and  drew  her  closer,  but  she 
kept  herself  free  still,  to  continue :  "  She  was  a  poor 
girl  —  she  was  only  a  governess ;  she  was  alone,  she 
thought  he  loved  her.  He  did  —  I  think  it  was  the 
only  happiness  she  ever  knew.  But  she  died  of  it." 

"  Oh,  I'm  so  glad  you  tell  me  —  it's  so  grand  of 
you  !  "  Baron  murmured.  "  Then  —  your  father  ?  " 
He  hesitated,  as  if  with  his  hands  on  old  wounds. 

"  He  had  his  own  troubles,  but  he  was  kind  to  her. 
It  was  all  misery  and  folly  —  he  was  married.  He 
wasn't  happy  —  there  were  good  reasons,  I  believe, 
for  that.  I  know  it  from  letters,  I  know  it  from  a 
person  who's  dead.  Everyone  is  dead  now  —  it's  too 
far  off.  That's  the  only  good  thing.  He  was  very 
kind  to  me ;  I  remember  him,  though  I  didn't  know 
then,  as  a  little  girl,  who  he  was.  He  put  me  with 
some  very  good  people  —  he  did  what  he  could  for 
me.  I  think,  later,  his  wife  knew  —  a  lady  who  came 
to  see  me  once  after  his  death.  I  was  a  very  little 
girl,  but  I  remember  many  things.  What  he  could 
he  did  —  something  that  helped  me  afterwards, 
something  that  helps  me  now.  I  think  of  him  with  a 
strange  pity  —  I  see  him  !  "  said  Mrs.  Ryves,  with  the 
faint  past  in  her  eyes.  "  You  mustn't  say  anything 
against  him,"  she  added,  gently  and  gravely. 

"Never  —  never;  for  he  has  only  made  it  more 
of  a  rapture  to  care  for  you." 

"  You  must  wait,  you  must  think ;  we   must  wait 


126  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

together,"  she  went  on.  "  You  can't  tell,  and  you 
must  give  me  time.  Now  that  you  know,  it's  all 
right ;  but  you  had  to  know.  Doesn't  it  make  us 
better  friends? "  asked  Mrs.  Ryves,  with  a  tired  smile 
which  had  the  effect  of  putting  the  whole  story  fur 
ther  and  further  away.  The  next  moment,  however, 
she  added  quickly,  as  if  with  the  sense  that  it 
couldn't  be  far  enough  :  "  You  don't  know,  you  can't 
judge,  you  must  let  it  settle.  Think  of  it,  think  of 
it ;  oh  you  will,  and  leave  it  so.  I  must  have  time 
myself,  oh  I  must!  Yes,  you  must  believe  me." 

She  turned  away  from  him,  and  he  remained  look 
ing  at  her  a  moment.  "Ah,  how  I  shall  work  for 
you  !  "  he  exclaimed. 

"You  must  work  for  yourself;  I'll  help  you." 
Her  eyes  had  met  his  eyes  again,  and  she  added, 
hesitating,  thinking :  "  You  had  better  know,  per 
haps,  who  he  was." 

Baron  shook  his  head,  smiling  confidently.  "  I 
don't  care  a  straw." 

"I  do  —  a  little.     He  was  a  great  man." 

"There  must  indeed  have  been  some  good  in  him." 

"  He  was  a  high  celebrity.  You've  often  heard 
of  him." 

Baron  wondered  an  instant.  "  I've  no  doubt  you're 
a  princess !  "  he  said  with  a  laugh.  She  made  him 
nervous. 

"  I'm  not  ashamed  of  him.  He  was  Sir  Dominick 
Ferrand." 

Baron  saw  in  her  face,  in  a  few  seconds,  that  she 


SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND.  I2/ 

had  seen  something  in  his.  He  knew  that  he  stared, 
then  turned  pale ;  it  had  the  effect  of  a  powerful 
shock.  He  was  cold  for  an  instant,  as  he  had  just 
found  her,  with  the  sense  of  danger,  the  confused 
horror  of  having  dealt  a  blow.  But  the  blood  rushed 
back  to  its  courses  with  his  still  quicker  consciousness 
of  safety,  and  he  could  make  out,  as  he  recovered 
his  balance,  that  his  emotion  struck  her  simply  as  a 
violent  surprise.  He  gave  a  muffled  murmur:  "Ah, 
it's  you,  my  beloved  !  "  which  lost  itself  as  he  drew 
her  close  and  held  her  long,  in  the  intensity  of  his 
embrace  and  the  wonder  of  his  escape.  It  took  more 
than  a  minute  for  him  to  say  over  to  himself  often 
enough,  with  his  hidden  face :  "  Ah,  she  must  never, 
never  know !  " 

She  never  knew  ;  she  only  learned,  when  she  asked 
him  casually,  that  he  had  in  fact  destroyed  the  old 
documents  she  had  had  such  a  comic  caprice  about. 
The  sensibility,  the  curiosity  they  had  had  the  queer 
privilege  of  exciting  in  her  had  lapsed  with  the  event 
as  irresponsibly  as  they  had  arisen,  and  she  appeared 
to  have  forgotten,  or  rather  to  attribute  now  to  other 
causes,  the  agitation  and  several  of  the  odd  incidents 
that  accompanied  them.  They  naturally  gave  Peter 
Baron  rather  more  to  think  about,  much  food,  indeed, 
for  clandestine  meditation,  some  of  which,  in  spite  of 
the  pains  he  took  not  to  be  caught,  was  noted  by  his 
friend  and  interpreted,  to  his  knowledge,  as  depres 
sion  produced  by  the  long  probation  she  succeeded 
in  imposing  on  him.  He  was  more  patient  than  she 


125  SIR    DOMINICK    FERRAND. 

could  guess,  with  all  her  guessing,  for  if  he  was  put  to 
the  proof  she  herself  was  not  left  undissected.  It 
came  back  to  him  again  and  again  that  if  the  docu 
ments  he  had  burned  proved  anything  they  proved 
that  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand's  human  errors  were  not  all 
of  one  order.  The  woman  he  loved  was  the  daughter 
of  her  father,  he  couldn't  get  over  that.  What  was 
more  to  the  point  was  that  as  he  came  to  know  her 
better  and  better  —  for  they  did  work  together  under 
Mr.  Morrish's  protection  —  his  affection  was  a  quantity 
still  less  to  be  neglected.  He  sometimes  wondered,  in 
the  light  of  her  general  straightness  (their  marriage 
had  brought  out  even  more  than  he  believed  there  was 
of  it)  whether  the  relics  in  the  davenport  were  genu 
ine.  That  piece  of  furniture  is  still  almost  as  useful 
to  him  as  Mr.  Morrish's  patronage.  There  is  a  tre 
mendous  run,  as  this  gentlemen  calls  it,  on  several  of 
their  songs.  Baron  nevertheless  still  tries  his  hand 
also  at  prose,  and  his  offerings  are  now  not  always 
declined  by  the  magazines.  But  he  has  never  ap 
proached  the  Promiscuous  again.  This  periodical 
published  in  due  course  a  highly  eulogistic  study  of 
the  remarkable  career  of  Sir  Dominick  Ferrand. 


NONA  VINCENT. 


NONA   VINCENT. 


I. 


"  I  WONDERED  whether  you  wouldn't  read  it  to 
me,"  said  Mrs.  Alsager,  as  they  lingered  a  little  near 
the  fire  before  he  took  leave.  She  looked  down  at 
the  fire  sideways,  drawing  her  dress  away  from  it 
and  making  her  proposal  with  a  shy  sincerity  that 
added  to  her  charm.  Her  charm  was  always  great 
for  Allan  Wayworth,  and  the  whole  air  of  her  house, 
which  was  simply  a  sort  of  distillation  of  herself,  so 
soothing,  so  beguiling  that  he  always  made  several 
false  starts  before  departure.  He  had  spent  some 
such  good  hours  there,  had  forgotten,  in  her  warm, 
golden  drawing-room,  so  much  of  the  loneliness  and 
so  many  of  the  worries  of  his  life,  that  it  had  come 
to  be  the  immediate  answer  to  his  longings,  the  cure 
for  his  aches,  the  harbour  of  refuge  from  his  storms. 
His  tribulations  were  not  unprecedented,  and  some 
of  his  advantages,  if  of  a  usual  kind,  were  marked 
in  degree,  inasmuch  as  he  was  very  clever  for  one  so 
young,  and  very  independent  for  one  so  poor.  He 
was  eight-and-twenty,  but  he  had  lived  a  good  deal 


132  NONA    VINCENT. 

and  was  full  of  ambitions  and  curiosities  and  dis 
appointments.  The  opportunity  to  talk  of  some  of 
these  in  Grosvenor  Place  corrected  perceptibly  the 
immense  inconvenience  of  London.  This  inconven 
ience  took  for  him  principally  the  line  of  insensibility 
to  Allan  Wayworth's  literary  form.  He  had  a  liter 
ary  form,  or  he  thought  he  had,  and  her  intelligent 
recognition  of  the  circumstance  was  the  sweetest 
consolation  Mrs.  Alsager  could  have  administered. 
She  was  even  more  literary  and  more  artistic  than 
he,  inasmuch  as  he  could  often  work  off  his  overflow 
(this  was  his  occupation,  his  profession),  while  the 
generous  woman,  abounding  in  happy  thoughts,  but 
inedited  and  unpublished,  stood  there  in  the  rising 
tide  like  the  nymph  of  a  fountain  in  the  plash  of  the 
marble  basin. 

The  year  before,  in  a  big  newspapery  house,  he 
had  found  himself  next  her  at  dinner,  and  they  had 
converted  the  intensely  material  hour  into  a  feast  of 
reason.  There  was  no  motive  for  her  asking  him  to 
come  to  see  her  but  that  she  liked  him,  which  it  was 
the  more  agreeable  to  him  to  perceive  as  he  per 
ceived  at  the  same  time  that  she  was  exquisite.  She 
was  enviably  free  to  act  upon  her  likings,  and  it  made 
Wayworth  feel  less  unsuccessful  to  infer  that  for  the 
moment  he  happened  to  be  one  of  them.  He  kept 
the  revelation  to  himself,  and  indeed  there  was  noth 
ing  to  turn  his  head  in  the  kindness  of  a  kind  woman. 
Mrs.  Alsager  occupied  so  completely  the  ground  of 
possession  that  she  would  have  been  condemned  to 


NONA    VINCENT.  133 

inaction  had  it  not  been  for  the  principle  of  giving. 
Her  husband,  who  was  twenty  years  her  senior,  a 
massive  personality  in  the  City  and  a  heavy  one  at 
home  (wherever  he  stood,  or  even  sat,  he  was  monu 
mental),  owned  half  a  big  newspaper  and  the  whole 
of  a  great  many  other  things.  He  admired  his  wife, 
though  she  bore  no  children,  and  liked  her  to  have 
other  tastes  than  his,  as  that  seemed  to  give  a  greater 
acreage  to  their  life.  His  own  appetites  went  so  far 
he  could  scarcely  see  the  boundary,  and  his  theory 
was  to  trust  her  to  push  the  limits  of  hers,  so  that 
between  them  the  pair  should  astound  by  their  con 
sumption.  His  ideas  were  prodigiously  vulgar,  but 
some  of  them  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  carried  out 
by  a  person  of  perfect  delicacy.  Her  delicacy  made 
her  play  strange  tricks  with  them,  but  he  never  found 
this  out.  She  attenuated  him  without  his  knowing  it, 
for  what  he  mainly  thought  was  that  he  had  aggran 
dised  her.  Without  her  he  really  would  have  been 
bigger  still,  and  society,  breathing  more  freely,  was 
practically  under  an  obligation  to  her  which,  to  do  it 
justice,  it  acknowledged  by  an  attitude  of  mystified 
respect.  She  felt  a  tremulous  need  to  throw  her 
liberty  and  her  leisure  into  the  things  of  the  soul  — 
the  most  beautiful  things  she  knew.  She  found 
them,  when  she  gave  time  to  seeking,  in  a  hundred 
places,  and  particularly  in  a  dim  and  sacred  region 
—  the  region  of  active  pity  —  over  her  entrance  into 
which  she  dropped  curtains  so  thick  that  it  would 
have  been  an  impertinence  to  lift  them.  But  she 


134  NONA    VINCENT. 

cultivated  other  beneficent  passions,  and  if  she  cher 
ished  the  dream  of  something  fine  the  moments  at 
which  it  most  seemed  to  her  to  come  true  were  when 
she  saw  beauty  plucked  flower-like  in  the  garden  of 
art.  She  loved  the  perfect  work  —  she  had  the  ar 
tistic  chord.  This  chord  could  vibrate  only  to  the 
touch  of  another,  so  that  appreciation,  in  her  spirit, 
had  the  added  intensity  of  regret.  She  could  under 
stand  the  joy  of  creation,  and  she  thought  it  scarcely 
enough  to  be  told  that  she  herself  created  happiness. 
She  would  have  liked,  at  any  rate,  to  choose  her 
way  ;  but  it  was  just  here  that  her  liberty  failed  her. 
She  had  not  the  voice  —  she  had  only  the  vision. 
The  only  envy  she  was  capable  of  was  directed  to 
those  who,  as  she  said,  could  do  something. 

As  everything  in  her,  however,  turned  to  gentle 
ness,  she  was  admirably  hospitable  to  such  people 
as  a  class.  She  believed  Allan  Wayworth  could  do 
something,  and  she  liked  to  hear  him  talk  of  the  ways 
in  which  he  meant  to  show  it.  He  talked  of  them  al 
most  to  no  one  else  —  she  spoiled  him  for  other  listen 
ers.  With  her  fair  bloom  and  her  quiet  grace  she 
was  indeed  an  ideal  public,  and  if  she  had  ever  con 
fided  to  him  that  she  would  have  liked  to  scribble  (she 
had  in  fact  not  mentioned  it  to  a  creature),  he  would 
have  been  in  a  perfect  position  for  asking  her  why  a 
woman  whose  face  had  so  much  expression  should 
not  have  felt  that  she  achieved.  How  in  the  world 
could  she  express  better  ?  There  was  less  than  that 
in  Shakespeare  and  Beethoven.  She  had  never  been 


NONA    VINCENT.  135 

more  generous  than  when,  in  compliance  with  her 
invitation,  which  I  have  recorded,  he  brought  his 
play  to  read  to  her.  He  had  spoken  of  it  to  her 
before,  and  one  dark  November  afternoon,  when  her 
red  fireside  was  more  than  ever  an  escape  from  the 
place  and  the  season,  he  had  broken  out  as  he  came 
in  —  "  I've  done  it,  I've  done  it!"  She  made  him  tell 
her  all  about  it  —  she  took  an  interest  really  minute 
and  asked  questions  delightfully  apt.  She  had  spoken 
from  the  first  as  if  he  were  on  the  point  of  being 
acted,  making  him  jump,  with  her  participation,  all 
sorts  of  dreary  intervals.  She  liked  the  theatre  as 
she  liked  all  the  arts  of  expression,  and  he  had  known 
her  to  go  all  the  way  to  Paris  for  a  particular  perform 
ance.  Once  he  had  gone  with  her  —  the  time  she 
took  that  stupid  Mrs.  Mostyn.  She  had  been  struck, 
when  he  sketched  it,  with  the  subject  of  his  drama, 
and  had  spoken  words  that  helped  him  to  believe  in 
it.  As  soon  as  he  had  rung  down  his  curtain  on  the 
last  act  he  rushed  off  to  see  her,  but  after  that  he 
kept  the  thing  for  repeated  last  touches.  Finally,  on 
Christmas  day,  by  arrangement,  she  sat  there  and 
listened  to  it.  It  was  in  three  acts  and  in  prose,  but 
rather  of  the  romantic  order,  though  dealing  with 
contemporary  English  life,  and  he  fondly  believed 
that  it  showed  the  hand  if  not  of  the  master,  at  least 
of  the  prize  pupil. 

Allan  Wayworth  had  returned  to  England,  at  two- 
and-twenty,  after  a  miscellaneous  continental  educa 
tion  ;  his  father,  the  correspondent,  for  years,  in 


136  NONA    VINCENT. 

several  foreign  countries  successively,  of  a  conspicu 
ous  London  journal,  had  died  just  after  this,  leaving 
his  mother  and  her  two  other  children,  portionless 
girls,  to  subsist  on  a  very  small  income  in  a  very  dull 
German  town.-  The  young  man's  beginnings  in  Lon 
don  were  difficult,  and  he  had  aggravated  them  by 
his  dislike  of  journalism.  His  father's  connection 
with  it  would  have  helped  him,  but  he  was  (insanely, 
most  of  his  friends  judged  —  the  great  exception  was 
always  Mrs.  Alsager)  inimitable  on  the  question  of 
form.  Form  —  in  his  sense  —  was  not  demanded  by 
English  newspapers,  and  he  couldn't  give  it  to  them 
in  their  sense.  The  demand  for  it  was  not  great  any 
where,  and  Wayworth  spent  costly  weeks  in  polishing 
little  compositions  for  magazines  that  didn't  pay  for 
style.  The  only  person  who  paid  for  it  was  really 
Mrs.  Alsager :  she  had  an  infallible  instinct  for  the 
perfect.  She  paid  in  her  own  way,  and  if  Allan  Way- 
worth  had  been  a  wage-earning  person  it  would  have 
made  him  feel  that  if  he  didn't  receive  his  legal  dues 
his  palm  was  at  least  occasionally  conscious  of  a 
gratuity.  He  had  his  limitations,  his  perversities,  but 
the  finest  parts  of  him  were  the  most  alive,  and  he  was 
restless  and  sincere.  It  is  however  the  impression 
he  produced  on  Mrs.  Alsager  that  most  concerns  us : 
she  thought  him  not  only  remarkably  good-looking 
but  altogether  original.  There  were  some  usual  bad 
things  he  would  never  do  —  too  many  prohibitive 
puddles  for  him  in  the  short  cut  to  success. 

For  himself,  he  had  never  been  so  happy  as  since 


NONA    VINCENT.  137 

he  had  seen  his  way,  as  he  fondly  believed,  to  some 
sort  of  mastery  of  the  scenic  idea,  which  struck  him 
as  a  very  different  matter  now  that  he  looked  at  it 
from  within.  He  had  had  his  early  days  of  contempt 
for  it,  when  it  seemed  to  him  a  jewel,  dim  at  the  best, 
hidden  in  a  dunghill,  a  taper  burning  low  in  an  air 
thick  with  vulgarity.  It  was  hedged  about  with  sor 
did  approaches,  it  was  not  worth  sacrifice  and  suffer 
ing.  The  man  of  letters,  in  dealing  with  it,  would 
have  to  put  off  all  literature,  which  was  like  asking 
the  bearer  of  a  noble  name  to  forego  his  immemorial 
heritage.  Aspects  change,  however,  with  the  point 
of  view :  Way  worth  had  waked  up  one  morning  in  a 
different  bed  altogether.  It  is  needless  here  to  trace 
this  accident  to  its  source ;  it  would  have  been  much 
more  interesting  to  a  spectator  of  the  young  man's 
life  to  follow  some  of  the  consequences.  He  had 
been  made  (as  he  felt)  the  subject  of  a  special  revela 
tion,  and  he  wore  his  hat  like  a  man  in  love.  An 
angel  had  taken  him  by  the  hand  and  guided  him 
to  the  shabby  door  which  opens,  it  appeared,  into  an 
interior  both  splendid  and  austere.  The  scenic  idea 
was  magnificent  when  once  you  had  embraced  it  — 
the  dramatic  form  had  a  purity  which  made  some 
others  look  ingloriously  rough.  It  had  the  high  dignity 
of  the  exact  sciences,  it  was  mathematical  and  archi 
tectural.  It  was  full  of  the  refreshment  of  calculation 
and  construction,  the  incorruptibility  of  line  and  law. 
It  was  bare,  but  it  was  erect,  it  was  poor,  but  it  was 
noble ;  it  reminded  him  of  some  sovereign  famed  for 


138  NONA    VINCENT. 

justice  who  should  have  lived  in  a  palace  despoiled. 
There  was  a  fearful  amount  of  concession  in  it,  but 
what  you  kept  had  a  rare  intensity.  You  were  per 
petually  throwing  over  the  cargo  to  save  the  ship. 
but  what  a  motion  you  gave  her  when  you  made  her 
ride  the  waves  —  a  motion  as  rhythmic  as  the  dance  of 
a  goddess !  Wayworth  took  long  London  walks  and 
thought  of  these  things  —  London  poured  into  his 
ears  the  mighty  hum  of  its  suggestion.  His  imagina 
tion  glowed  and  melted  down  material,  his  intentions 
multiplied  and  made  the  air  a  golden  haze.  He  saw 
not  only  the  thing  he  should  do,  but  the  next  and  the 
next  and  the  next ;  the  future  opened  before  him  and 
he  seemed  to  walk  on  marble  slabs.  The  more  he 
tried  the  dramatic  form  the  more  he  loved  it,  the  more 
he  looked  at  it  the  more  he  perceived  in  it.  What  he 
perceived  in  it  indeed  he  now  perceived  everywhere ; 
if  he  stopped,  in  the  London  dusk,  before  some  flaring 
shop-window,  the  place  immediately  constituted  itself 
behind  footlights,  became  a  framed  stage  for  his 
figures.  He  hammered  at  these  figures  in  his  lonely 
lodging,  he  shaped  them  and  he  shaped  their  taber 
nacle  ;  he  was  like  a  goldsmith  chiselling  a  casket, 
bent  over  with  the  passion  for  perfection.  When  he 
was  neither  roaming  the  streets  with  his  vision  nor 
worrying  his  problem  at  his  table,  he  was  exchanging 
ideas  on  the  general  question  with  Mrs.  Alsager,  to 
whom  he  promised  details  that  would  amuse  her  in 
later  and  still  happier  hours.  Her  eyes  were  full  of 
tears  when  he  read  her  the  last  words  of  the  finished 
work,  and  she  murmured,  divinely  - 


NONA    VINCENT.  139 

"  And  now  —  to  get  it  done,  to  get  it  done  !  " 

"  Yes,  indeed  —  to  get  it  done!  "  Wayworth  stared 
at  the  fire,  slowly  rolling  up  his  type-copy.  "  But 
that's  a  totally  different  part  of  the  business,  and 
altogether  secondary." 

"  But  of  course  you  want  to  be  acted  ? " 

"Of  course  I  do  —  but  it's  a  sudden  descent.  I 
want  to  intensely,  but  I'm  sorry  I  want  to." 

"It's  there  indeed  that  the  difficulties  begin,"  said 
Mrs.  Alsager,  a  little  off  her  guard. 

"  How  can  you  say  that  ?  It's  there  that  they 
end!" 

"  Ah,  wait  to  see  where  they  end  !  " 

"  I  mean  they'll  now  be  of  a  totally  different 
order,"  Wayworth  explained.  "  It  seems  to  me 
there  can  be  nothing  in  the  world  more  difficult  than 
to  write  a  play  that  will  stand  an  all-round  test,  and 
that  in  comparison  with  them  the  complications  that 
spring  up  at  this  point  are  of  an  altogether  smaller 
kind." 

"  Yes,  they're  not  inspiring,"  said  Mrs.  Alsager ; 
"  they're  discouraging,  because  they're  vulgar.  The 
other  problem,  the  working  out  of  the  thing  itself,  is 
pure  art." 

"  How  well  you  understand  everything !  "  The 
young  man  had  got  up,  nervously,  and  was  leaning 
against  the  chimney-piece  with  his  back  to  the  fire 
and  his  arms  folded.  The  roll  of  his  copy,  in  his 
fist,  was  squeezed  into  the  hollow  of  one  of  them.  He 
looked  down  at  Mrs.  Alsager,  smiling  gratefully, 


I4O  NONA    VINCENT. 

and  she  answered  him  with  a  smile  from  eyes  still 
charmed  and  suffused.  "  Yes,  the  vulgarity  will 
begin  now,"  he  presently  added. 

"You'll  suffer  dreadfully." 

"I  shall  suffer  in  a  good  cause." 

"  Yes,  giving  that  to  the  world !  You  must  leave 
it  with  me,  I  must  read  it  over  and  over,"  Mrs.  Alsa- 
ger  pleaded,  rising  to  come  nearer  and  draw  the 
copy,  in  its  cover  of  greenish-grey  paper,  which  had 
a  generic  identity  now  to  him,  out  of  his  grasp. 
"Who  in  the  world  will  do  it?  —  who  in  the  world 
can?"  she  went  on,  close  to  him,  turning  over  the 
leaves.  Before  he  could  answer  she  had  stopped  at 
one  of  the  pages ;  she  turned  the  book  round  to  him, 
pointing  out  a  speech.  "  That's  the  most  beautiful 
place  —  those  lines  are  a  perfection."  He  glanced 
at  the  spot  she  indicated,  and  she  begged  him  to  read 
them  again  —  he  had  read  them  admirably  before. 
He  knew  them  by  heart,  and,  closing  the  book  while 
she  held  the  other  end  of  it,  he  murmured  them  over 
to  her  —  they  had  indeed  a  cadence  that  pleased  him 
—  watching,  with  a  facetious  complacency  which  he 
hoped  was  pardonable,  the  applause  in  her  face. 
"Ah,  who  can  utter  such  lines  as  that?"  Mrs. 
Alsager  broke  out ;  "  whom  can  you  find  to  do 
her?" 

"  We'll  find  people  to  do  them  all !  " 

"  But  not  people  who  are  worthy." 

"  They'll  be  worthy  enough  if  they're  willing 
enough.  I'll  work  with  them  —  I'll  grind  it  into 


NONA    VINCENT.  14! 

them/'  He  spoke  as  if  he  had  produced  twenty 
plays. 

"  Oh,  it  will  be  interesting  !  "  she  echoed. 

"But  I  shall  have  to  find  my  theatre  first.  I  shall 
have  to  get  a  manager  to  believe  in  me." 

"  Yes  —  they're  so  stupid  !  " 

"  But  fancy  the  patience  I  shall  want,  and  how  I 
shall  have  to  watch  and  wait,"  said  Allan  Wayworth. 
"  Do  you  see  me  hawking  it  about  London  ? " 

"  Indeed  I  don't- — it  would  be  sickening." 

"  It's  what  I  shall  have  to  do.  I  shall  be  old 
before  it>'s  produced." 

"I  shall  be  old  very  soon  if  it  isn't !  "  Mrs.  Alsager 
cried.  "  I  know  one  or  two  of  them,"  she  mused. 

"  Do  you  mean  you  would  speak  to  them  ?  " 

"  The  thing  is  to  get  them  to  read  it.  I  could  do 
that." 

"  That's  the  utmost  I  ask.  But  it's  even  for  that  I 
shall  have  to  wait." 

She  looked  at  him  with  kind  sisterly  eyes.  "  You 
sha'n't  wait." 

"  Ah,  you  dear  lady  !  "  Wayworth  murmured. 

"  That  is  you  may,  but  /  won't !  Will  you  leave 
me  your  copy  ? "  she  went  on,  turning  the  pages 
again. 

"Certainly;  I  have  another."  Standing  near  him 
she  read  to  herself  a  passage  here  and  there ;  then, 
in  her  sweet  voice,  she  read  some  of  them  out. 
"  Oh,  if  you  were  only  an  actress !  "  the  young  man 
exclaimed. 


142  NONA    VINCENT. 

"  That's  the  last  thing  I  am.  There's  no  comedy 
in  me  !  " 

She  had  never  appeared  to  Wayworth  so  much  his 
good  genius.  "Is  there  any  tragedy?"  he  asked, 
with  the  levity  of  complete  confidence. 

She  turned  away  from  him,  at  this,  with  a  strange 
and  charming  laugh  and  a  "  Perhaps  that  will  be  for 
you  to  determine !  "  But  before  he  could  disclaim 
such  a  responsibility  she  had  faced  him  again  and 
was  talking  about  Nona  Vincent  as  if  she  had  been 
the  most  interesting  of  their  friends  and  her  situa 
tion  at  that  moment  an  irresistible  appeal  to  their 
sympathy.  Nona  Vincent  was  the  heroine  of  the 
play,  and  Mrs.  Alsager  had  taken  a  tremendous 
fancy  to  her.  "  I  can't  tell  you  how  I  like  that 
woman!"  she  exclaimed  in  a  pensive  rapture  of 
credulity  which  could  only  be  balm  to  the  artistic 
spirit. 

"I'm  awfully  glad  she  lives  a  bit.  What  I  feel 
about  her  is  that  she's  a  good  deal  like  you"  Way- 
worth  observed. 

Mrs.  Alsager  stared  an  instant  and  turned  faintly 
red.  This  was  evidently  a  view  that  failed  to  strike 
her;  she  didn't,  however,  treat  it  as  a  joke.  "I'm 
not  impressed  with  the  resemblance.  I  don't  see 
myself  doing  what  she  does." 

"  It  isn't  so  much  what  she  does"  the  young  man 
argued,  drawing  out  his  moustache. 

"  But  what  she  does  is  the  whole  point.  She 
simply  tells  her  love  —  I  should  never  do  that." 


NONA    VINCENT.  143 

"  If  you  repudiate  such  a  proceeding  with  such 
energy,  why  do  you  like  her  for  it  ? " 

"  It  isn't  what  I  like  her  for." 

"  What  else,  then  ?    That's  intensely  characteristic." 

Mrs.  Alsager  reflected,  looking  down  at  the  fire ; 
she  had  the  air  of  having  half-a-dozen  reasons  to 
choose  from.  But  the  one  she  produced  was  unex 
pectedly  simple ;  it  might  even  have  been  prompted 
by  despair  at  not  finding  others.  "  I  like  her  be 
cause  you  made  her !  "  she  exclaimed  with  a  laugh, 
moving  again  away  from  her  companion. 

Wayworth  laughed  still  louder.  "  You  made  her 
a  little  yourself.  I've  thought  of  her  as  looking  like 
you." 

"  She  ought  to  look  much  better,"  said  Mrs.  Alsa 
ger.  "  No,  certainly,  I  shouldn't  do  what  she  does." 

"  Not  even  in  the  same  circumstances  ?  " 

"  I  should  never  find  myself  in  such  circumstances. 
They're  exactly  your  play,  and  have  nothing  in  com 
mon  with  such  a  life  as  mine.  However,"  Mrs. 
Alsager  went  on,  "  her  behaviour  was  natural  for 
her,  and  not  only  natural,  but,  it  seems  to  me,  thor 
oughly  beautiful  and  noble.  I  can't  sufficiently  ad 
mire  the  talent  and  tact  with  which  you  make  one 
accept  it,  and  I  tell  you  frankly  that  it's  evident  to 
me  there  must  be  a  brilliant  future  before  a  young 
man  who,  at  the  start,  has  been  capable  of  such  a 
stroke  as  that.  Thank  heaven  I  can  admire  Nona 
Vincent  as  intensely  as  I  feel  that  I  don't  resemble 
her!" 


144  NONA    VINCENT. 

"  Don't  exaggerate  that,"  said  Allan  Wayworth. 

"  My  admiration  ?  " 

"Your  dissimilarity.  She  has  your  face,  your  air, 
your  voice,  your  motion ;  she  has  many  elements  of 
your  being." 

"  Then  she'll  damn  your  play  !  "  Mrs.  Alsager  re 
plied.  They  joked  a  little  over  this,  though  it  was 
not  in  the  tone  of  pleasantry  that  Wayworth's  hostess 
soon  remarked  :  "  You've  got  your  remedy,  however : 
have  her  done  by  the  right  woman." 

"Oh,  have  her  'done' — have  her  'done'!"  the 
young  man  gently  wailed. 

"  I  see  what  you  mean,  my  poor  friend*  What  a 
pity,  when  it's  such  a  magnificent  part  —  such  a 
chance  for  a  clever  serious  girl !  Nona  Vincent  is 
practically  your  play  —  it  will  be  open  to  her  to  carry 
it  far  or  to  drop  it  at  the  first  corner." 

"  It's  a  charming  prospect,"  said  Allan  Wayworth^ 
with  sudden  scepticism.  They  looked  at  each  other 
with  eyes  that,  for  a  lurid  moment,  saw  the  worst 
of  the  worst ;  but  before  they  parted  they  had  ex 
changed  vows  and  confidences  that  were  dedicated 
wholly  to  the  ideal.  It  is  not  to  be  supposed,  how 
ever,  that  the  knowledge  that  Mrs.  Alsager  would 
help  him  made  Wayworth  less  eager  to  help  himself. 
He  did  what  he  could  and  felt  that  she,  on  her  side, 
was  doing  no  less  ;  but  at  the  end  of  a  year  he  was 
obliged  to  recognise  that  their  united  effort  had 
mainly  produced  the  fine  flower  of  discouragement. 
At  the  end  of  a  year  the  lustre  had,  to  his  own  eyes, 


NONA    VINCENT.  145 

quite  faded  from  his  unappreciated  masterpiece,  and 
he  found  himself  writing  for  a  biographical  diction 
ary  little  lives  of  celebrities  he  had  never  heard  of. 
To  be  printed,  anywhere  and  anyhow,  was  a  form  of 
glory  for  a  man  so  unable  to  be  acted,  and  to  be  paid, 
even  at  encyclopaedic  rates,  had  the  consequence  of 
making  one  resigned  and  verbose.  He  couldn't  smug 
gle  style  into  a  dictionary,  but  he  could  at  least  reflect 
that  he  had  done  his  best  to  learn  from  the  drama 
that  it  is  a  gross  impertinence  almost  anywhere.  He 
had  knocked  at  the  door  of  every  theatre  in  London, 
and,  at  a  ruinous  expense,  had  multiplied  type-copies 
of  Nona  Vincent  to  replace  the  neat  transcripts  that 
had  descended  into  the  managerial  abyss.  His  play 
was  not  even  declined  —  no  such  flattering  intimation 
was  given  him  that  it  had  been  read.  What  the  man 
agers  would  do  for  Mrs.  Alsager  concerned  him  little 
today ;  the  thing  that  was  relevant  was  that  they 
would  do  nothing  for  him.  That  charming  woman 
felt  humbled  to  the  earth,  so  little  response  had  she 
had  from  the  powers  on  which  she  counted.  The  two 
never  talked  about  the  play  now,  but  he  tried  to  show 
her  a  still  finer  friendship,  that  she  might  not  think 
he  felt  she  had  failed  him.  He  still  walked  about 
London  with  his  dreams,  but  as  months  succeeded 
months  and  he  left  the  year  behind  him  they  were 
dreams  not  so  much  of  success  as  of  revenge.  Suc 
cess  seemed  a  colourless  name  for  the  reward  of  his 
patience ;  something  fiercely  florid,  something  san- 
guinolent  was  more  to  the  point.  His  best  consola- 


146  NONA    VINCENT. 

tion  however  was  still  in  the  scenic  idea ;  it  was  not 
till  now  that  he  discovered  how  incurably  he  was  in 
love  with  it.  By  the  time  a  vain  second  year  had 
chafed  itself  away  he  cherished  his  fruitless  faculty 
the  more  for  the  obloquy  it  seemed  to  suffer.  He 
lived,  in  his  best  hours,  in  a  world  of  subjects  and 
situations  ;  he  wrote  another  play  and  made  it  as  dif 
ferent  from  its  predecessor  as  such  a  very  good  thing 
could  be.  It  might  be  a  very  good  thing,  but  when 
he  had  committed  it  to  the  theatrical  limbo  indiscrim- 
inating  fate  took  no  account  of  the  difference.  He 
was  at  last  able  to  leave  England  for  three  or  four 
months ;  he  went  to  Germany  to  pay  a  visit  long  de 
ferred  to  his  mother  and  sisters. 

Shortly  before  the  time  he  had  fixed  for  his  return 
he  received  from  Mrs.  Alsager  a  telegram  consisting 
of  the  words :  "  Loder  wishes  see  you  —  putting  Nona 
instant  rehearsal."  He  spent  the  few  hours  before 
his  departure  in  kissing  his  mother  and  sisters,  who 
knew  enough  about  Mrs.  Alsager  to  judge  it  lucky 
this  respectable  married  lady  was  not  there  —  a  relief, 
however,  accompanied  with  speculative  glances  at 
London  and  the  morrow.  Loder,  as  our  young  man 
was  aware,  meant  the  new  "  Renaissance,"  but  though 
he  reached  home  in  the  evening  it  was  not  to  this 
convenient  modern  theatre  that  Wayworth  first  pro 
ceeded.  He  spent  a  late  hour  with  Mrs.  Alsager,  an 
hour  that  throbbed  with  calculation.  She  told  him 
that  Mr.  Loder  was  charming,  he  had  simply  taken 
up  the  play  in  its  turn ;  he  had  hopes  of  it,  more- 


NONA    VINCENT.  147 

over,  that  on  the  part  of  a  professional  pessimist 
might  almost  be  qualified  as  ecstatic.  It  had  been 
cast,  with  a  margin  for  objections,  and  Violet  Grey 
was  to  do  the  heroine.  She  had  been  capable,  while 
he  was  away,  of  a  good  piece  of  work  at  that  foggy 
old  playhouse  the  "  Legitimate ;  "  the  piece  was  a 
clumsy  rechauffe,  but  she  at  least  had  been  fresh. 
Way  worth  remembered  Violet  Grey — hadn't  he,  for 
two  years,  on  a  fond  policy  of  "  looking  out,"  kept 
dipping  into  the  London  theatres  to  pick  up  prospec 
tive  interpreters  ?  He  had  not  picked  up  many  as 
yet,  and  this  young  lady  at  all  events  had  never  wrig 
gled  in  his  net.  She  was  pretty  and  she  was  odd,  but 
he  had  never  prefigured  her  as  Nona  Vincent,  nor 
indeed  found  himself  attracted  by  what  he  already 
felt  sufficiently  launched  in  the  profession  to  speak 
of  as  her  artistic  personality.  Mrs.  Alsager  was 
different  —  she  declared  that  she  had  been  struck 
not  a  little  by  some  of  her  tones.  The  girl  was  in 
teresting  in  the  thing  at  the  "  Legitimate,"  and  Mr. 
Loder,  who  had  his  eye  on  her,  described  her  as 
ambitious  and  intelligent.  She  wanted  awfully  to 
get  on  —  and  some  of  those  ladies  were  so  lazy ! 
Wayworth  was  sceptical  —  he  had  seen  Miss  Violet 
Grey,  who  was  terribly  itinerant,  in  a  dozen  theatres 
but  only  in  one  aspect.  Nona  Vincent  had  a  dozen 
aspects,  but  only  one  theatre;  yet  with  what  a  fever 
ish  curiosity  the  young  man  promised  himself  to 
watch  the  actress  on  the  morrow !  Talking  the 
matter  over  with  Mrs.  Alsager  now  seemed  the  very 


148  NONA    VINCENT. 

stuff  that  rehearsal  was  made  of.  The  near  pros 
pect  of  being  acted  laid  a  finger  even  on  the  lip  of 
inquiry ;  he  wanted  to  go  on  tiptoe  till  the  first  night, 
to  make  no  condition  but  that  they  should  speak  his 
lines,  and  he  felt  that  he  wouldn't  so  much  as  raise 
an  eyebrow  at  the  scene-painter  if  he  should  give 
him  an  old  oak  chamber. 

He  became  conscious,  the  next  day,  that  his  danger 
would  be  other  than  this,  and  yet  he  couldn't  have 
expressed  to  himself  what  it  would  be.  Danger  was 
there,  doubtless  —  danger  was  everywhere,  in  the 
world  of  art,  and  still  more  in  the  world  of  com 
merce  ;  but  what  he  really  seemed  to  catch,  for  the 
hour,  was  the  beating  of  the  wings  of  victory.  Noth 
ing  could  undermine  that,  since  it  was  victory  simply 
to  be  acted.  It  would  be  victory  even  to  be  acted 
badly ;  a  reflection  that  didn't  prevent  him,  however, 
from  banishing,  in  his  politic  optimism,  the  word 
"bad"  from  his  vocabulary.  It  had  no  application, 
in  the  compromise  of  practice  ;  it  didn't  apply  even  to 
his  play,  which  he  was  conscious  he  had  already  out 
lived  and  as  to  which  he  foresaw  that,  in  the  coming 
weeks,  frequent  alarm  would  alternate,  in  his  spirit, 
with  frequent  esteem.  When  he  went  down  to  the 
dusky  daylit  theatre  (it  arched  over  him  like  the  tem 
ple  of  fame)  Mr.  Loder,  who  was  as  charming  as  Mrs. 
Alsager  had  announced,  struck  him  as  the  genius  of 
hospitality.  The  manager  began  to  explain  why,  for 
so  long,  he  had  given  no  sign ;  but  that  was  the  last 
thing  that  interested  Wayworth  now,  and  he  could 


NONA    VINCENT.  149 

never  remember  afterwards  what  reasons  Mr.  Loder 
had  enumerated.  He  liked,  in  the  whole  business  of 
discussion  and  preparation,  even  the  things  he  had 
thought  he  should  probably  dislike,  and  he  revelled 
in  those  he  had  thought  he  should  like.  He  watched 
Miss  Violet  Grey  that  evening  with  eyes  that  sought 
to  penetrate  her  possibilities.  She  certainly  had  a 
few ;  they  were  qualities  of  voice  and  face,  qualities 
perhaps  even  of  intelligence  ;  he  sat  there  at  any 
rate  writh  a  fostering,  coaxing  attention,  repeating 
over  to  himself  as  convincingly  as  he  could  that  she 
was  not  common  —  a  circumstance  all  the  more  cred 
itable  as  the  part  she  was  playing  seemed  to  him 
desperately  so.  He  perceived  that  this  was  why  it 
pleased  the  audience ;  he  divined  that  it  was  the  part 
they  enjoyed  rather  than  the  actress.  He  had  a  pri 
vate  panic,  wondering  how,  if  they  liked  that  form, 
they  could  possibly  like  his.  His  form  had  now  be 
come  quite  an  ultimate  idea  to  him.  By  the  time  the 
evening  was  over  some  of  Miss  Violet  Grey's  features, 
several  of  the  turns  of  her  head,  a  certain  vibration  of 
her  voice,  had  taken  their  place  in  the  same  category. 
She  was  interesting,  she  was  distinguished ;  at  any 
rate  he  had  accepted  her :  it  came  to  the  same  thing. 
But  he  left  the  theatre  that  night  without  speaking 
to  her  —  moved  (a  little  even  to  his  own  mystification) 
by  an  odd  procrastinating  impulse.  On  the  morrow 
he  was  to  read  his  three  acts  to  the  company,  and 
then  he  should  have  a  good  deal  to  say ;  what  he  felt 
for  the  moment  was  a  vague  indisposition  to  commit 


150  NONA    VINCENT. 

himself.  Moreover  he  found  a  slight  confusion  of 
annoyance  in  the  fact  that  though  he  had  been  try 
ing  all  the  evening  to  look  at  Nona  Vincent  in  Violet 
Grey's  person,  what  subsisted  in  his  vision  was  simply 
Violet  Grey  in  Nona's.  He  didn't  wish  to  see  the 
actress  so  directly,  or  even  so  simply  as  that ;  and  it 
had  been  very  fatiguing,  the  effort  to  focus  Nona 
both  through  the  performer  and  through  the  "  Legit 
imate."  Before  he  went  to  bed  that  night  he  posted 
three  words  to  Mrs.  Alsager  —  "  She's  not  a  bit  like 
it,  but  I  dare  say  I  can  make  her  do." 

He  was  pleased  with  the  way  the  actress  listened, 
the  next  day,  at  the  reading ;  he  was  pleased  indeed 
with  many  things,  at  the  reading,  and  most  of  all 
with  the  reading  itself.  The  whole  affair  loomed 
large  to  him  and  he  magnified  it  and  mapped  it  out. 
He  enjoyed  his  occupation  of  the  big,  dim,  hollow 
theatre,  full  of  the  echoes  of  "  effect "  and  of  a  queer 
smell  of  gas  and  success  —  it  all  seemed  such  a  pas 
sive  canvas  for  his  picture.  For  the  first  time  in  his  life 
he  was  in  command  of  resources ;  he  was  acquainted 
with  the  phrase,  but  had  never  thought  he  should 
know  the  feeling.  He  was  surprised  at  what  Loder 
appeared  ready  to  do,  though  he  reminded  himself 
that  he  must  never  show  it.  He  foresaw  that  there 
would  be  two  distinct  concomitants  to  the  artistic 
effort  of  producing  a  play,  one  consisting  of  a  great 
deal  of  anguish  and  the  other  of  a  great  deal  of  amuse 
ment.  He  looked  back  upon  the  reading,  afterwards, 
as  the  best  hour  in  the  business,  because  it  was  then 


NONA    VINCENT.  15! 

that  the  piece  had  most  struck  him  as  represented. 
What  came  later  was  the  doing  of  others ;  but  this, 
with  its  imperfections  and  failures,  was  all  his  own. 
The  drama  lived,  at  any  rate,  for  that  hour,  with  an 
intensity  that  it  was  promptly  to  lose  in  the  poverty 
and  patchiness  of  rehearsal ;  he  could  see  its  life 
reflected,  in  a  way  that  was  sweet  to  him,  in  the 
stillness  of  the  little  semi-circle  of  attentive  and 
inscrutable,  of  water-proofed  and  muddy-booted, 
actors.  Miss  Violet  Grey  was  the  auditor  he  had 
most  to  say  to,  and  he  tried  on  the  spot,  across  the 
shabby  stage,  to  let  her  have  the  soul  of  her  part. 
Her  attitude  was  graceful,  but  though  she  appeared 
to  listen  with  all  her  faculties  her  face  remained  per 
fectly  blank  ;  a  fact,  however,  not  discouraging  to 
Wayworth,  who  liked  her  better  for  not  being  pre 
mature.  Her  companions  gave  discernible  signs  of 
recognising  the  passages  of  comedy ;  yet  Wayworth 
forgave  her  even  then  for  being  inexpressive.  She 
evidently  wished  before  everything  else  to  be  simply 
sure  of  what  it  was  all  about. 

He  was  more  surprised  even  than  at  the  revelation 
of  the  scale  on  which  Mr.  Loder  was  ready  to  pro 
ceed  by  the  discovery  that  some  of  the  actors  didn't 
like  their  parts,  and  his  heart  sank  as  he  asked  him 
self  what  he  could  possibly  do  with  them  if  they  were 
going  to  be  so  stupid.  This  was  the  first  of  his  dis 
appointments  ;  somehow  he  had  expected  every  indi 
vidual  to  become  instantly  and  gratefully  conscious 
of  a  rare  opportunity,  and  from  the  moment  such  a 


152  NONA    VINCENT. 

calculation  failed  he  was  at  sea,  or  mindful  at  any 
rate  that  more  disappointments  would  come.  It  was 
impossible  to  make  out  what  the  manager  liked  or 
disliked  ;  no  judgment,  no  comment  escaped  him ; 
his  acceptance  of  the  play  and  his  views  about  the 
way  it  should  be  mounted  had  apparently  converted 
him  into  a  veiled  and  shrouded  figure.  Wayworth 
was  able  to  grasp  the  idea  that  they  would  all  move 
now  in  a  higher  and  sharper  air  than  that  of  compli 
ment  and  confidence.  When  he  talked  with  Violet 
Grey  after  the  reading  he  gathered  that  she  was 
really  rather  crude :  what  better  proof  of  it  could 
there  be  than  her  failure  to  break  out  instantly  with 
an  expression  of  delight  about  her  great  chance  ? 
This  reserve,  however,  had  evidently  nothing  to  do 
with  high  pretensions ;  she  had  no  wish  to  make  him 
feel  that  a  person  of  her  eminence  was  superior  to 
easy  raptures.  He  guessed,  after  a  little,  that  she 
was  puzzled  and  even  somewhat  frightened  —  to  a 
certain  extent  she  had  not  understood.  Nothing 
could  appeal  to  him  more  than  the  opportunity  to 
clear  up  her  difficulties,  in  the  course  of  the  exami 
nation  of  which  he  quickly  discovered  that,  so  far  as 
she  had  understood,  she  had  understood  wrong.  If 
she  was  crude  it  was  only  a  reason  the  more  for  talk 
ing  to  her ;  he  kept  saying  to  her  "  Ask  me  —  ask 
me  :  ask  me  everything  you  can  think  of." 

She  asked  him,  she  was  perpetually  asking  him, 
and  at  the  first  rehearsals,  which  were  without  form 
and  void  to  a  degree  that  made  them  strike  him  much 


NONA    VINCENT.  153 

more  as  the  death  of  an  experiment  than  as  the  dawn 
of  a  success,  they  threshed  things  out  immensely  in  a 
corner  of  the  stage,  with  the  effect  of  his  coming 
to  feel  that  at  any  rate  she  was  in  earnest.  He  felt 
more  and  more  that  his  heroine  was  the  keystone  of 
his  arch,  for  which  indeed  the  actress  was  very  ready 
to  take  her.  But  when  he  reminded  this  young  lady 
of  the  way  the  whole  thing  practically  depended  on 
her  she  was  alarmed  and  even  slightly  scandalised : 
she  spoke  more  than  once  as  if  that  could  scarcely 
be  the  right  way  to  construct  a  play  —  make  it  stand 
or  fall  by  one  poor  nervous  girl.  She  was  almost 
morbidly  conscientious,  and  in  theory  he  liked  her  for 
this,  though  he  lost  patience  three  or  four  times  with 
the  things  she  couldn't  do  and  the  things  she  could. 
At  such  times  the  tears  came  to  her  eyes ;  but  they 
were  produced  by  her  own  stupidity,  she  hastened 
to  assure  him,  not  by  the  way  he  spoke,  which  was 
awfully  kind  under  the  circumstances.  Her  sincerity 
made  her  beautiful,  and  he  wished  to  heaven  (and 
made  a  point  of  telling  her  so)  that  she  could  sprinkle 
a  little  of  it  over  Nona.  Once,  however,  she  was 
so  touched  and  troubled  that  the  sight  of  it  brought 
the  tears  for  an  instant  to  his  own  eyes ;  and  it  so 
happened  that,  turning  at  this  moment,  he  found 
himself  face  to  face  with  Mr.  Loder.  The  manager 
stared,  glanced  at  the  actress,  who  turned  in  the  other 
direction,  and  then  smiling  at  Wayworth,  exclaimed, 
with  the  humour  of  a  man  who  heard  the  gallery 
laugh  every  night : 
"I  say— I  say!" 


154  NONA    VINCENT. 

"  What's  the  matter  ?  "  Way  worth  asked. 

"  I'm  glad  to  see  Miss  Grey  is  taking  such  pains 
with  you." 

"  Oh,  yes  —  she'll  turn  me  out!"  said  the  young 
man,  gaily.  He  was  quite  aware  that  it  was  apparent 
he  was  not  superficial  about  Nona,  and  abundantly 
determined,  into  the  bargain,  that  the  rehearsal  of  the 
piece  should  not  sacrifice  a  shade  of  thoroughness  to 
any  extrinsic  consideration. 

Mrs.  Alsager,  whom,  late  in  the  afternoon,  he  used 
often  to  go  and  ask  for  a  cup  of  tea,  thanking  her  in 
advance  for  the  rest  she  gave  him  and  telling  her  how 
he  found  that  rehearsal  (as  they  were  doing  it  —  it 
was  a  caution !)  took  it  out  of  one  —  Mrs.  Alsager, 
more  and  more  his  good  genius  and,  as  he  repeatedly 
assured  her,  his  ministering  angel,  confirmed  him  in 
this  superior  policy  and  urged  him  on  to  every  form 
of  artistic  devotion.  She  had,  naturally,  never  been 
more  interested  than  now  in  his  work ;  she  wanted  to 
hear  everything  about  everything.  She  treated  him 
as  heroically  fatigued,  plied  him  with  luxurious  restora 
tives,  made  him  stretch  himself  on  cushions  and  rose- 
leaves.  They  gossipped  more  than  ever,  by  her  fire, 
about  the  artistic  life  ;  he  confided  to  her,  for  instance, 
all  his  hopes  and  fears,  all  his  experiments  and  anx 
ieties,  on  the  subject  of  the  representative  of  Nona. 
She  was  immensely  interested  in  this  young  lady  and 
showed  it  by  taking  a  box  again  and  again  (she  had 
seen  her  half-a-dozen  times  already),  to  study  her 
capacity  through  the  veil  of  her  present  part.  Like 


NONA    VINCENT.  155 

Allan  Wayworth  she  found  her  encouraging  only  by 
fits,  for  she  had  fine  flashes  of  badness.  She  was 
intelligent,  but  she  cried  aloud  for  training,  and  the 
training  was  so  absent  that  the  intelligence  had  only 
a  fraction  of  its  effect.  She  was  like  a  knife  without 
an  edge  —  good  steel  that  had  never  been  sharpened; 
she  hacked  away  at  her  hard  dramatic  loaf,  she 
couldn't  cut  it  smooth. 


II. 


"  CERTAINLY  my  leading  lady  won't  make  Nona 
much  like  you ! "  Wayworth  one  day  gloomily  re 
marked  to  Mrs.  Alsager.  There  were  days  when 
the  prospect  seemed  to  him  awful. 

"  So  much  the  better.  There's  no  necessity  for 
that." 

"  I  wish  you'd  train  her  a  little  —  you  could  so 
easily,"  the  young  man  went  on ;  in  response  to 
which  Mrs.  Alsager  requested  him  not  to  make  such 
cruel  fun  of  her.  But  she  was  curious  about  the 
girl,  wanted  to  hear  of  her  character,  her  private 
situation,  how  she  lived  and  where,  seemed  indeed 
desirous  to  befriend  her.  Wayworth  might  not  have 
known  much  about  the  private  situation  of  Miss 
Violet  Grey,  but,  as  it  happened,  he  was  able,  by 
the  time  his  play  had  been  three  weeks  in  rehearsal, 
to  supply  information  on  such  points.  She  was  a 
charming,  exemplary  person,  educated,  cultivated, 
with  highly  modern  tastes,  an  excellent  musician. 


156  NONA    VINCENT. 

She  had  lost  her  parents  and  was  very  much  alone 
in  the  world,  her  only  two  relations  being  a  sister, 
who  was  married  to  a  civil  servant  (in  a  highly  re 
sponsible  post)  in  India,  and  a  dear  little  old-fash 
ioned  aunt  (really  a  great-aunt)  with  whom  she  lived 
at  Notting  Hill,  who  wrote  children's  books  and  who, 
it  appeared,  had  once  written  a  Christmas  panto 
mime.  It  was  quite  an  artistic  home  —  not  on  the 
scale  of  Mrs.  Alsager's  (to  compare  the  smallest 
things  with  the  greatest !)  but  intensely  refined  and 
honourable.  Wayworth  went  so  far  as  to  hint  that 
it  would  be  rather  nice  and  human  on  Mrs.  Alsager's 
part  to  go  there  —  they  would  take  it  so  kindly  if  she 
should  call  on  them.  She  had  acted  so  often  on  his 
hints  that  he  had  formed  a  pleasant  habit  of  expect 
ing  it :  it  made  him  feel  so  wisely  responsible  about 
giving  them.  But  this  one  appeared  to  fall  to  the 
ground,  so  that  he  let  the  subject  drop.  Mrs.  Alsa- 
ger,  however,  went  yet  once  more  to  the  "  Legitimate," 
as  he  found  by  her  saying  to  him  abruptly,  on  the 
morrow:  "  Oh,  she'll  be  very  good  —  she'll  be  very 
good."  When  they  said  "she,"  in  these  days,  they 
always  meant  Violet  Grey,  though  they  pretended, 
for  the  most  part,  that  they  meant  Nona  Vincent. 
"  Oh  yes,"  Wayworth  assented,  "  she  wants  so  to  !  " 
Mrs.  Alsagerwas  silent  a  moment;  then  she*asked, 
a  little  inconsequently,  as  if  she  had  come  back  from 
a  reverie  :  "  Does  she  want  to  very  much  ?  " 

"  Tremendously  —  and    it    appears    she    has    been 
fascinated  by  the  part  from  the  first." 


NONA    VINCENT.  157 

"  Why  then  didn't  she  say  so  ?  " 

"Oh,  because  she's  so  funny." 

"She  is  funny,"  said  Mrs.  Alsager,  musingly;  and 
presently  she  added  :  "  She's  in  love  with  you." 

Wayworth  stared,  blushed  very  red,  then  laughed 
out.  "  What  is  there  funny  in  that?  "  he  demanded  ; 
but  before  his  interlocutress  could  satisfy  him  on  this 
point  he  inquired,  further,  how  she  knew  anything 
about  it.  After  a  little  graceful  evasion  she  ex 
plained  that  the  night  before,  at  the  "  Legitimate," 
Mrs.  Beaumont,  the  wife  of  the  actor-manager,  had 
paid  her  a  visit  in  her  box;  which  had  happened, 
in  the  course  of  their  brief  gossip,  to  lead  to  her  re 
marking  that  she  had  never  been  "behind."  Mrs. 
Beaumont  offered  on  the  spot  to  take  her  round,  and 
the  fancy  had  seized  her  to  accept  the  invitation. 
She  had  been  amused  for  the  moment,  and  in  this 
way  it  befell  that  her  conductress,  at  her  request,  had 
introduced  her  to  Miss  Violet  Grey,  who  was  waiting 
in  the  wing  for  one  of  her  scenes.  Mrs.  Beaumont 
had  been  called  away  for  three  minutes,  and  during 
this  scrap  of  time,  face  to  face  with  the  actress,  she 
had  discovered  the  poor  girl's  secret.  Wayworth 
qualified  it  as  a  senseless  thing,  but  wished  to  know 
what  had  led  to  the  discovery.  She  characterised 
this  inquiry  as  superficial  for  a  painter  of  the  ways 
of  women ;  and  he  doubtless  didn't  improve  it  by 
remarking  profanely  that  a  cat  might  look  at  a 
king  and  that  such  things  were  convenient  to  know. 
Even  on  this  ground,  however,  he  was  threatened  by 


158  NONA    VINCENT. 

Mrs.  Alsager,  who  contended  that  it  might  not  be  a 
joking  matter  to  the  poor  girl.  To  this  Wayworth, 
who  now  professed  to  hate  talking  about  the  pas 
sions  he  might  have  inspired,  could  only  reply  that 
he  meant  it  couldn't  make  a  difference  to  Mrs. 
Alsager. 

"  How  in  the  world  do  you  know  what  makes  a 
difference  to  me?"  this  lady  asked,  with  incongru 
ous  coldness,  with  a  haughtiness  indeed  remarkable 
in  so  gentle  a  spirit. 

He  saw  Violet  Grey  that  night  at  the  theatre,  and 
it  was  she  who  spoke  first  of  her  having  lately  met  a 
friend  of  his. 

"  She's  in  love  with  you,"  the  actress  said,  after  he 
had  made  a  show  of  ignorance ;  "  doesn't  that  tell 
you  anything  ? " 

He  blushed  redder  still  than  Mrs.  Alsager  had 
made  him  blush,  but  replied,  quickly  enough  and 
very  adequately,  that  hundreds  of  women  were  natur 
ally  dying  for  him. 

"Oh,  I  don't  care,  for  you're  not  in  love  with  her /" 
the  girl  continued. 

"  Did  she  tell  you  that  too  ?  "  Wayworth  asked  ;  but 
she  had  at  that  moment  to  go  on. 

Standing  where  he  could  see  her  he  thought  that 
on  this  occasion  she  threw  into  her  scene,  which  was 
the  best  she  had  in  the  play,  a  brighter  art  than  ever 
before,  a  talent  that  could  play  with  its  problem.  She 
was  perpetually  doing  things  out  of  rehearsal  (she 
did  two  or  three  to-night,  in  the  other  man's  piece), 


NONA    VINCENT.  159 

that  he  as  often  wished  to  heaven  Nona  Vincent 
might  have  the  benefit  of.  She  appeared  to  be  able 
to  do  them  for  every  one  but  him  —  that  is  for  every 
one  but  Nona.  He  was  conscious,  in  these  days,  of 
an  odd  new  feeling,  which  mixed  (this  was  a  part  of 
its  oddity)  with  a  very  natural  and  comparatively  old 
one  and  which  in  its  most  definite  form  was  a  dull 
ache  of  regret  that  this  young  lady's  unlucky  star 
should  have  placed  her  on  the  stage.  He  wished  in 
his  worst  uneasiness  that,  without  going  further,  she 
would  give  it  up ;  and  yet  it  soothed  that  uneasiness 
to  remind  himself  that  he  saw  grounds  to  hope  she 
would  go  far  enough  to  make  a  marked  success  of 
Nona.  There  were  strange  and  painful  moments 
when,  as  the  interpretress  of  Nona,  he  almost  hated 
her ;  after  which,  however,  he  always  assured  himself 
that  he  exaggerated,  inasmuch  as  what  made  this 
aversion  seem  great,  when  he  was  nervous,  was  simply 
its  contrast  with  the  growing  sense  that  there  were 
grounds  —  totally  different  —  on  which  she  pleased 
him.  She  pleased  him  as  a  charming  creature  —  by 
her  sincerities  and  her  perversities,  by  the  varieties 
and  surprises  of  her  character  and  by  certain  happy 
facts  of  her  person.  In  private  her  eyes  were  sad  to 
him  and  her  voice  was  rare.  He  detested  the  idea 
that  she  should  have  a  disappointment  or  an  humilia 
tion,  and  he  wanted  to  rescue  her  altogether,  to  save 
and  transplant  her.  One  way  to  save  her  was  to  see 
to  it,  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  that  the  production  of 
his  play  should  be  a  triumph ;  and  the  other  way  —  it 


160  NONA    VINCENT. 

was  really  too  queer  to  express  —  was  almost  to  wish 
that  it  shouldn't  be.  Then,  for  the  future,  there 
would  be  safety  and  peace,  and  not  the  peace  of 
death  —  the  peace  of  a  different  life.  It  is  to  be 
added  that  our  young  man  clung  to  the  former  of 
these  ways  in  proportion  as  the  latter  perversely 
tempted  him.  He  was  nervous  at  the  best,  increas 
ingly  and  intolerably  nervous;  but  the  immediate 
remedy  was  to  rehearse  harder  and  harder,  and  above 
all  to  work  it  out  with  Violet  Grey.  Some  of  her 
comrades  reproached  him  with  working  it  out  only 
with  her,  as  if  she  were  the  whole  affair ;  to  which  he 
replied  that  they  could  afford  to  be  neglected,  they 
were  all  so  tremendously  good.  She  was  the  only 
person  concerned  whom  he  didn't  flatter. 

The  author  and  the  actress  stuck  so  to  the  business 
in  hand  that  she  had  very  little  time  to  speak  to  him 
again  of  Mrs.  Alsager,  of  whom  indeed  her  imagina 
tion  appeared  adequately  to  have  disposed.  Way- 
worth  once  remarked  to  her  that  Nona  Vincent  was 
supposed  to  be  a  good  deal  like  his  charming  friend ; 
but  she  gave  a  blank  "  Supposed  by  whom  ?  "  in  con 
sequence  of  which  he  never  returned  to  the  subject. 
He  confided  his  nervousness  as  freely  as  usual  to 
Mrs.  Alsager,  who  easily  understood  that  he  had  a 
peculiar  complication  of  anxieties.  His  suspense 
varied  in  degree  from  hour  to  hour,  but  any  relief 
there  might  have  been  in  this  was  made  up  for  by  its 
being  of  several  different  kinds.  One  afternoon,  as 
the  first  performance  drew  near,  Mrs.  Alsager  said  to 


NONA    VINCENT.  l6l 

him,  in  giving  him  his  cup  of  tea  and  on  his  having 
mentioned  that  he  had  not  closed  his  eyes  the  night 
before : 

"  You  must  indeed  be  in  a  dreadful  state.  Anxiety 
for  another  is  still  worse  than  anxiety  for  one's  self." 

"For  another?"  Wayworth  repeated,  looking  at  her 
over  the  rim  of  his  cup. 

"  My  poor  friend,  you're  nervous  about  Nona  Vin 
cent,  but  you're  infinitely  more  nervous  about  Violet 
Grey." 

"  She  is  Nona  Vincent !  " 

"No,  she  isn't  —  not  a  bit!"  said  Mrs.  Alsager, 
abruptly. 

"  Do  you  really  think  so  ?  "  Wayworth  cried,  spill 
ing  his  tea  in  his  alarm. 

"What  I  think  doesn't  signify  —  I  mean  what  I 
think  about  that.  What  I  meant  to  say  was  that 
great  as  is  your  suspense  about  your  play,  your  sus 
pense  about  your  actress  is  greater  still." 

"I  can  only  repeat  that  my  actress  is  my  play." 

Mrs.  Alsager  looked  thoughtfully  into  the  teapot. 

"  Your  actress  is  your  — 

"  My  what  ? "  the  young  man  asked,  with  a  little 
tremor  in  his  voice,  as  his  hostess  paused. 

"  Your  very  dear  friend.  You're  in  love  with  her 
—  at  present."  And  with  a  sharp  click  Mrs.  Alsager 
dropped  the  lid  on  the  fragrant  receptacle. 

"  Not  yet  —  not  yet !  "  laughed  her  visitor. 

"You  will  be  if  she  pulls  you  through." 

"You  declare  that  she  won't  pull  me  through." 


l62  NONA    VINCENT. 

Mrs.  Alsager  was  silent  a  moment,  after  which  she 
softly  murmured  :  "  I'll  pray  for  her." 

"You're  the  most  generous  of  women!"  Way- 
worth  cried ;  then  coloured  as  if  the  words  had  not 
been  happy.  They  would  have  done  indeed  little 
honour  to  a  man  of  tact. 

The  next  morning  he  received  five  hurried  lines 
from  Mrs.  Alsager.  She  had  suddenly  been  called 
to  Torquay,  to  see  a  relation  who  was  seriously  ill ; 
she  should  be  detained  there  several  days,  but  she 
had  an  earnest  hope  of  being  able  to  return  in  time 
for  his  first  night.  In  any  event  he  had  her  unre 
stricted  good  wishes.  He  missed  her  extremely,  for 
these  last  days  were  a  great  strain  and  there  was 
little  comfort  to  be  derived  from  Violet  Grey.  She 
was  even  more  nervous  than  himself,  and  so  pale  and 
altered  that  he  was  afraid  she  would  be  too  ill  to  act. 
It  was  settled  between  them  that  they  made  each 
other  worse  and  that  he  had  now  much  better  leave 
her  alone.  They  had  pulled  Nona  so  to  pieces  that 
nothing  seemed  left  of  her  —  she  must  at  least  have 
time  to  grow  together  again.  He  left  Violet  Grey 
alone,  to  the  best  of  his  ability,  but  she  carried  out 
imperfectly  her  own  side  of  the  bargain.  She  came 
to  him  with  new  questions  —  she  waited  for  him  with 
old  doubts,  and  half  an  hour  before  the  last  dress- 
rehearsal,  on  the  eve  of  production,  she  proposed  to 
him  a  totally  fresh  rendering  of  his  heroine.  This 
incident  gave  him  such  a  sense  of  insecurity  that  he 
turned  his  back  on  her  without  a  word,  bolted  out  of 


NONA    VINCENT.  163 

the  theatre,  dashed  along  the  Strand  and  walked  as 
far  as  the  Bank.  Then  he  jumped  into  a  hansom  and 
came  westward,  and  when  he  reached  the  theatre 
again  the  business  was  nearly  over.  It  appeared, 
almost  to  his  disappointment,  not  bad  enough  to  give 
him  the  consolation  of  the  old  playhouse  adage  that 
the  worst  dress-rehearsals  make  the  best  first  nights. 
The  morrow,  which  was  a  Wednesday,  was  the 
dreadful  day  ;  the  theatre  had  been  closed  on  the  Mon 
day  and  the  Tuesday.  Every  one,  on  the  Wednes 
day,  did  his  best  to  let  every  one  else  alone,  and  every 
one  signally  failed  in  the  attempt.  The  day,  till 
seven  o'clock,  was  understood  to  be  consecrated  to 
rest,  but  every  one  except  Violet  Grey  turned  up  at 
the  theatre.  Wayworth  looked  at  Mr.  Loder,  and 
Mr.  Loder  looked  in  another  direction,  which  was 
as  near  as  they  came  to  conversation.  Wayworth 
was  in  a  fidget,  unable  to  eat  or  sleep  or  sit  still,  at 
times  almost  in  terror.  He  kept  quiet  by  keeping, 
as  usual,  in  motion;  he  tried  to  walk  away  from  his 
nervousness.  He  walked  in  the  afternoon  toward 
Notting  Hill,  but  he  succeeded  in  not  breaking  the 
vow  he  had  taken  not  to  meddle  with  his  actress. 
She  was  like  an  acrobat  poised  on  a  slippery  ball  — 
if  he  should  touch  her  she  would  topple  over.  He 
passed  her  door  three  times  and  he  thought  of  her 
three  hundred.  This  was  the  hour  at  which  he  most 
regretted  that  Mrs.  Alsager  had  not  come  back  — 
for  he  had  called  at  her  house  only  to  learn  that  she 
was  still  at  Torquay.  This  was  probably  queer,  and 


164  NONA    VINCENT. 

it  was  probably  queerer  still  that  she  hadn't  written  to 
him ;  but  even  of  these  things  he  wasn't  sure,  for  in 
losing,  as  he  had  now  completely  lost,  his  judgment 
of  his  play,  he  seemed  to  himself  to  have  lost  his 
judgment  of  everything.  When  he  went  home,  how 
ever,  he  found  a  telegram  from  the  lady  of  Grosvenor 
Place  —  "Shall  be  able  to  come  —  reach  town  by 
seven."  At  half -past  eight  o'clock,  through  a  little 
aperture  in  the  curtain  of  the  "  Renaissance,"  he  saw 
her  in  her  box  with  a  cluster  of  friends  —  completely 
beautiful  and  beneficent.  The  house  was  magnificent 
—  too  good  for  his  play,  he  felt ;  too  good  for  any  play. 
Everything  now  seemed  too  good  —  the  scenery,  the 
furniture,  the  dresses,  the  very  programmes.  He 
seized  upon  the  idea  that  this  was  probably  what  was 
the  matter  with  the  representative  of  Nona  —  she 
was  only  too  good.  He  had  completely  arranged 
with  this  young  lady  the  plan  of  their  relations  during 
the  evening ;  and  though  they  had  altered  everything 
else  that  they  had  arranged  they  had  promised  each 
other  not  to  alter  this.  It  was  wonderful  the  number 
of  things  they  had  promised  each  other.  He  would 
start  her,  he  would  see  her  off  —  then  he  would  quit 
the  theatre  and  stay  away  till  just  before  the  end. 
She  besought  him  to  stay  away  — .it  would  make  her 
infinitely  easier.  He  saw  that  she  was  exquisitely 
dressed  —  she  had  made  one  or  two  changes  for  the 
better  since  the  night  before,  and  that  seemed  some 
thing  definite  to  turn  over  and  over  in  his  mind  as  he 
rumbled  foggily  home  in  the  four-wheeler  in  which,  a 


NONA    VINCENT.  165 

few  steps  from  the  stage-door,  he  had  taken  refuge  as 
soon  as  he  knew  that  the  curtain  was  up.  He  lived  a 
couple  of  miles  off,  and  he  had  chosen  a  four-wheeler 
to  drag  out  the  time. 

When  he  got  home  his  fire  was  out,  his  room  was 
cold,  and  he  lay  down  on  his  sofa  in  his  overcoat.  He 
had  sent  his  landlady  to  the  dress-circle,  on  purpose ; 
she  would  overflow  with  words  and  mistakes.  The 
house  seemed  a  black  void,  just  as  the  streets  had 
done  —  every  one  was,  formidably,  at  his  play.  He 
was  quieter  at  last  than  he  had  been  for  a  fortnight, 
and  he  felt  too  weak  even  to  wonder  how  the  thing 
was  going.  He  believed  afterwards  that  he  had  slept 
an  hour ;  but  even  if  he  had  he  felt  it  to  be  still  too 
early  to  return  to  the  theatre.  He  sat  down  by  his 
lamp  and  tried  to  read  —  to  read  a  little  compendious 
life  of  a  great  English  statesman,  out  of  a  "  series." 
It  struck  him  as  brilliantly  clever,  and  he  asked  him 
self  whether  that  perhaps  were  not  rather  the  sort  of 
thing  he  ought  to  have  taken  up  :  not  the  statesman 
ship,  but  the  art  of  brief  biography.  Suddenly 
he  became  aware  that  he  must  hurry  if  he  was  to 
reach  the  theatre  at  all  —  it  was  a  quarter  to  eleven 
o'clock.  He  scrambled  out  and,  this  time,  found  a 
hansom  —  he  had  lately  spent  enough  money  in  cabs 
to  add  to  his  hope  that  the  profits  of  his  new  profes 
sion  would  be  great.  His  anxiety,  his  suspense 
flamed  up  again,  and  as  he  rattled  eastward  —  he 
went  fast  now  —  he  was  almost  sick  with  alternations. 
As  he  passed  into  the  theatre  the  first  man  —  some 


1 66  NONA    VINCENT. 

underling  —  who  met  him,  cried  to  him,  breathlessly  : 
"You're  wanted,  sir  —  you're  wanted!"  Rethought 
his  tone  very  ominous  —  he  devoured  the  man's  eyes 
with  his  own,  for  a  betrayal :  did  he  mean  that  he 
was  wanted  for  execution  ?  Some  one  else  pressed 
him,  almost  pushed  him,  forward ;  he  was  already  on 
the  stage.  Then  he  became  conscious  of  a  sound 
more  or  less  continuous,  but  seemingly  faint  and  far, 
which  he  took  at  first  for  the  voice  of  the  actors 
heard  through  their  canvas  walls,  the  beautiful  built-in 
room  of  the  last  act.  But  the  actors  were  in  the 
wing,  they  surrounded  him ;  the  curtain  was  down 
and  they  were  coming  off  from  before  it.  They  had 
been  called,  and  he  was  called  —  they  all  greeted  him 
with  "Go  on  —  go  on!"  He  was  terrified  —  he 
couldn't  go  on  —  he  didn't  believe  in  the  applause, 
which  seemed  to  him  only  audible  enough  to  sound 
half-hearted. 

"  Has  it  gone  ?  — has  it  gone  ?  "  he  gasped  to  the 
people  round  him;  and  he  heard  them  say  "  Rather 
—  rather!"  perfunctorily,  mendaciously  too,  as  it 
struck  him,  and  even  with  mocking  laughter,  the 
laughter  of  defeat  and  despair.  Suddenly,  though 
all  this  must  have  taken  but  a  moment,  Loder  burst 
upon  him  from  somewhere  with  a  "  For  God's  sake 
don't  keep  them,  or  they'll  stop  !  "  "  But  I  can't  go 
on  for  that  !  "  Way  worth  cried,  in  anguish  ;  the  sound 
seemed  to  him  already  to  have  ceased.  Loder  had 
hold  of  him  and  was  shoving  him  ;  he  resisted  and 
looked  round  frantically  for  Violet  Grey,  who  per- 


NONA    VINCENT.  l6/ 

haps  would  tell  him  the  truth.  There  was  by  this 
time  a  crowd  in  the  wing,  all  with  strange  grimacing 
painted  faces,  but  Violet  was  not  among  them  and 
her  very  absence  frightened  him.  He  uttered  her 
name  with  an  accent  that  he  afterwards  regretted  — 
it  gave  them,  as  he  thought,  both  away ;  and  while 
Loder  hustled  him  before  the  curtain  he  heard  some 
one  say  "  She  took  her  call  and  disappeared."  She 
had  had  a  call,  then  —  this  was  what  was  most  pres 
ent  to  the  young  man  as  he  stood  for  an  instant  in 
the  glare  of  the  footlights,  looking  blindly  at  the 
great  vaguely-peopled  horseshoe  and  greeted  with 
plaudits  which  now  seemed  to  him  at  once  louder 
than  he  deserved  and  feebler  than  he  desired.  They 
sank  to  rest  quickly,  but  he  felt  it  to  be  long  before 
he  could  back  away,  before  he  could,  in  his  turn, 
seize  the  manager  by  the  arm  and  cry  huskily  — 
"  Has  it  really  gone  —  really  ?  " 

Mr.  Loder  looked  at  him  hard  and  replied  after 
an  instant :  "  The  play's  all  right !  " 

Wayworth  hung  upon  his  lips.     "  Then  what's  all 
wrong? " 

"We  must  do  something  to  Miss  Grey." 

"  What's  the  matter  with  her  ?  " 

"She  isn't  /;/  it!" 

"  Do  you  mean  she  has  failed  ?  " 

"  Yes,  damn  it  —  she  has  failed." 

Wayworth  stared.     "  Then  how  can   the  play  be 
all  right?" 

"  Oh,  we'll  save  it  —  we'll  save  it." 


1 68  NONA    VINCENT. 

"  Where's  Miss  Grey —  where  is  she  ?  "  the  young 
man  asked. 

Loder  caught  his  arm  as  he  was  turning  away 
again  to  look  for  his  heroine.  "  Never  mind  her  now 
—  she  knows  it !  " 

Wayworth  was  approached  at  the  same  moment 
by  a  gentleman  he  knew  as  one  of  Mrs.  Alsager's 
friends  —  he  had  perceived  him  in  that  lady's  box. 
Mrs.  Alsager  was  waiting  there  for  the  successful 
author;  she  desired  very  earnestly  that  he  would 
come  round  and  speak  to  her.  Wayworth  assured 
himself  first  that  Violet  had  left  the  theatre  —  one  of 
the  actresses  could  tell  him  that  she  had  seen  her 
throw  on  a  cloak,  without  changing  her  dress,  and 
had  learnt  afterwards  that  she  had,  the  next  moment, 
flung  herself,  after  flinging  her  aunt,  into  a  cab.  He 
had  wished  to  invite  half  a  dozen  persons,  of  whom 
Miss  Grey  and  her  elderly  relative  were  two,  to  come 
home  to  supper  with  him ;  but  she  had  refused  to 
make  any  engagement  beforehand  (it  would  be  so 
dreadful  to  have  to  keep  it  if  she  shouldn't  have 
made  a  hit),  and  this  attitude  had  blighted  the  pleas 
ant  plan,  which  fell  to  the  ground.  He  had  called 
her  morbid,  but  she  was  immovable.  Mrs.  Alsager's 
messenger  let  him  know  that  he  was  expected  to  sup 
per  in  Grosvenor  Place,  and  half  an  hour  afterwards 
he  was  seated  there  among  complimentary  people 
and  flowers  and  popping  corks,  eating  the  first  or 
derly  meal  he  had  partaken  of  for  a  week.  Mrs. 
Alsager  had  carried  him  off  in  her  brougham  —  the 


NONA    VINCENT.  169 

other  people  who  were  coming  got  into  things  of 
their  own.  He  stopped  her  short  as  soon  as  she 
began  to  tell  him  how  tremendously  every  one  had 
been  struck  by  the  piece ;  he  nailed  her  down  to  the 
question  of  Violet  Grey.  Had  she  spoilt  the  play, 
had  she  jeopardised  or  compromised  it  —  had  she 
been  utterly  bad,  had  she  been  good  in  any  degree  ? 

"  Certainly  the  performance  would  have  seemed 
better  if  she  had  been  better,"  Mrs.  Alsager  con 
fessed. 

"And  the  play  would  have  seemed  better  if  the 
performance  had  been  better,"  Wayworth  said, 
gloomily,  from  the  corner  of  the  brougham. 

"  She  does  what  she  can,  and  she  has  talent,  and 
she  looked  lovely.  But  she  doesn't  see  Nona  Vin 
cent.  She  doesn't  see  the  type  —  she  doesn't  see  the 
individual  —  she  doesn't  see  the  woman  you  meant 
She's  out  of  it  —  she  gives  you  a  different  person." 

"  Oh,  the  woman  I  meant !  "  the  young  man  ex 
claimed,  looking  at  the  London  lamps  as  he  rolled 
by  them.  "  I  wish  to  God  she  had  known  you  /  "  he 
added,  as  the  carriage  stopped.  After  they  had 
passed  into  the  house  he  said  to  his  companion : 
"You  see  she  won't  pull  me  through." 

"Forgive  her  —  be  kind  to  her!"  Mrs.  Alsager 
pleaded. 

"  I  shall  only  thank  her.  The  play  may  go  to  the 
dogs." 

"  If  it  does —  if  it  does,"  Mrs.  Alsager  began,  with 
her  pure  eyes  on  him. 


NONA    VINCENT. 


"Well,  what  if  it  does?" 

She  couldn't  tell  him,  for  the  rest  of  her  guests 
came  in  together  ;  she  only  had  time  to  say  :  "  It 
ska'  n't  go  to  the  dogs  !  " 

He  came  away  before  the  others,  restless  with  the 
desire  to  go  to  Notting  Hill  even  that  night,  late  as 
it  was,  haunted  with  the  sense  that  Violet  Grey  had 
measured  her  fall.  When  he  got  into  the  street, 
however,  he  allowed  second  thoughts  to  counsel 
another  course  ;  the  effect  of  knocking  her  up  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning  would  hardly  be  to  soothe  her. 
He  looked  at  six  newspapers  the  next  day  and  found 
in  them  never  a  good  word  for  her.  They  were  well 
enough  about  the  piece,  but  they  were  unanimous  as 
to  the  disappointment  caused  by  the  young  actress 
whose  former  efforts  had  excited  such  hopes  and  on 
whom,  on  this  occasion,  such  pressing  responsibilities 
rested.  They  asked  in  chorus  what  was  the  matter 
with  her,  and  they  declared  in  chorus  that  the  play, 
which  was  not  without  promise,  was  handicapped 
(they  all  used  the  same  word)  by  the  odd  want  of 
correspondence  between  the  heroine  and  her  inter 
preter.  Wayworth  drove  early  to  Notting  Hill,  but 
he  didn't  take  the  newspapers  with  him  ;  Violet  Grey 
could  be  trusted  to  have,  sent  out  for  them  by  the 
peep  of  dawn  and  to  have  fed  her  anguish  full.  She 
declined  to  see  him  —  she  only  sent  down  word  by 
her  aunt  that  she  was  extremely  unwell  and  should 
be  unable  to  act  that  night  unless  she  were  suffered 
to  spend  the  day  unmolested  and  in  bed.  Wayworth 


NONA    VINCENT.  I /I 

sat  for  an  hour  with  the  old  lady,  who  understood 
everything  and  to  whom  he  could  speak  frankly. 
She  gave  him  a  touching  picture  of  her  niece's  con 
dition,  which  was  all  the  more  vivid  for  the  simple 
words  in  which  it  was  expressed :  "  She  feels  she 
isn't  right,  you  know  —  she  feels  she  isn't  right!  " 

"Tell  her  it  doesn't  matter  —  it  doesn't  matter  a 
straw  !  "  said  Way  worth. 

"  And  she's  so  proud  —  you  know  how  proud  she 
is  !  "  the  old  lady  went  on. 

"Tell  her  I'm  more  than  satisfied,  that  I  accept 
her  gratefully  as  she  is." 

"  She  says  she  injures  your  play,  that  she  ruins 
it,"  said  his  interlocutress. 

"She'll  improve,  immensely  —  she'll  grow  into  the 
part,"  the  young  man  continued. 

"She'd  improve  if  she  knew  how  —  but  she  says 
she  doesn't.  She  has  given  all  she  has  got,  and  she 
doesn't  know  what's  wanted." 

"  What's  wanted  is  simply  that  she  should  go 
straight  on  and  trust  me." 

"  How  can  she  trust  you  when  she  feels  she's 
losing  you  ?  " 

"  Losing  me  ?  "  Way  worth  cried. 

"  You'll  never  forgive  her  if  your  play  is  taken 
off!  " 

"It  will  run  six  months,"  said  the  author  of  the 
piece. 

The  old  lady  laid  her  hand  on  his  arm.  "  What 
will  you  do  for  her  if  it  does  ?  " 


NONA    VINCENT. 


He  looked  at  Violet  Grey's  aunt  a  moment.  "  Do 
you  say  your  niece  is  very  proud  ?  " 

"  Too  proud  for  her  dreadful  profession." 

"  Then  she  wouldn't  wish  you  to  ask  me  that," 
Wayworth  answered,  getting  up. 

When  he  reached  home  he  was  very  tired,  and  for 
a  person  to  whom  it  was  open  to  consider  that  he 
had  scored  a  success  he  spent  a  remarkably  dismal 
day.  All  his  restlessness  had  gone,  and  fatigue  and 
depression  possessed  him.  He  sank  into  his  old 
chair  bythe  fire  and  sat  there  for  hours  with  his  eyes 
closed.  His  landlady  came  in  to  bring  his  luncheon 
and  mend  the  fire,  but  he  feigned  to  be  asleep,  so  as 
not  to  be  spoken  to.  It  is  to  be  supposed  that  sleep 
at  last  overtook  him,  for  about  the  hour  that  dusk 
began  to  gather  he  had  an  extraordinary  impression, 
a  visit  that,  it  would  seem,  could  have  belonged  to  no 
waking  consciousness.  Nona  Vincent,  in  face  and 
form,  the  living  heroine  of  his  play,  rose  before  him 
in  his  little  silent  room,  sat  down  with  him  at  his 
dingy  fireside.  She  was  not  Violet  Grey,  she  was 
not  Mrs.  Alsager,  she  was  not  any  woman  he  had 
seen  upon  earth,  nor  was  it  any  masquerade  of 
friendship  or  of  penitence.  Yet  she  wras  more  fa 
miliar  to  him  than  the  women  he  had  known  best, 
and  she  was  ineffably  beautiful  and  consoling.  She 
filled  the  poor  room  with  her  presence,  the  effect  of 
which  was  as  soothing  as  some  odour  of  incense. 
She  was  as  quiet  as  an  affectionate  sister,  and  there 
was  no  surprise  in  her  being  there.  Nothing  more 


NONA    VINCENT.  1 73 

real  had  ever  befallen  him,  and  nothing,  somehow, 
more  reassuring.  He  felt  her  hand  rest  upon  his 
own,  and  all  his  senses  seemed  to  open  to  her  mes 
sage.  She  struck  him,  in  the  strangest  way,  both  as 
his  creation  and  as  his  inspirer,  and  she  gave  him 
the  happiest  consciousness  of  success.  If  she  was 
so  charming,  in  the  red  firelight,  in  her  vague,  clear- 
coloured  garments,  it  was  because  he  had  made  her 
so,  and  yet  if  the  weight  seemed  lifted  from  his 
spirit  it  was  because  she  drew  it  away.  When  she 
bent  her  deep  eyes  upon  him  they  seemed  to  speak 
of  safety  and  freedom  and  to  make  a  green  garden 
of  the  future.  From  time  to  time  she  smiled  and 
said:  "I  live  —  I  live  —  I  live."  How  long  she 
stayed  he  couldn't  have  told,  but  when  his  landlady 
blundered  in  with  the  lamp  Nona  Vincent  was  no 
longer  there.  He  rubbed  his  eyes,  but  no  dream  had 
ever  been  so  intense ;  and  as  he  slowly  got  out  of 
his  chair  it  was  with  a  deep  still  joy — the  joy  of  the 
artist  —  in  the  thought  of  how  right  he  had  been, 
how  exactly  like  herself  he  had  made  her.  She  had 
come  to  show  him  that.  At  the  end  of  five  minutes, 
however,  he  felt  sufficiently  mystified  to  call  his  land 
lady  back  —  he  wanted  to  ask  her  a  question.  When 
the  good  woman  reappeared  the  question  hung  fire 
an  instant ;  then  it  shaped  itself  as  the  inquiry : 
"  Has  any  lady  been  here  ?  " 

"  No,  sir —  no  lady  at  all." 

The  woman  seemed  slightly  scandalised. 

"  Not  Miss  Vincent  ?  " 


174  NONA    VINCENT. 

"  Miss  Vincent,  sir  ?  " 

"The  young  lady  of  my  play,  don't  you  know  ? " 
"  Oh,  sir,  you  mean  Miss  Violet  Grey  !  " 
"  No  I  don't,  at  all.     I  think  I  mean  Mrs.  Alsager." 
"  There  has  been  no  Mrs.  Alsager,  sir." 
"  Nor  anybody  at  all  like  her  ?  " 
The   woman   looked    at  him  as  if   she  wondered 
what  had  suddenly  taken  him.     Then  she  asked  in 
an  injured  tone  :    "  Why  shouldn't  I  have  told  you  if 
you'd  'ad  callers,  sir  ?  " 

"  I  thought  you  might  have  thought  I  was  asleep." 
"  Indeed  you  were,  sir,  when  I  came  in  with  the 
lamp — and  well  you'd  earned  it,  Mr.  Wayworth  !  " 

The  landlady  came  back  an  hour  later  to  bring 
him  a  telegram ;  it  was  just  as  he  had  begun  to  dress 
to  dine  at  his  club  and  go  down  to  the  theatre. 

"  See  me  to-night  in  front,  and  don't  come  near 
me  till  it's  over." 

It  was  in  these  words  that  Violet  communicated 
her  wishes  for  the  evening.  He  obeyed  them  to 
the  letter;  he  watched  her  from  the  depths  of  a 
box.  He  was  in  no  position  to  say  how  she  might 
have  struck  him  the  night  before,  but  what  he  saw 
during  these  charmed  hours  filled  him  with  admira 
tion  and  gratitude.  She  was  in  it,  this  time ;  she 
had  pulled  herself  together,  she  had  taken  posses 
sion,  she  was  felicitous  at  every  turn.  Fresh  from 
his  revelation  of  Nona  he  was  in  a  position  to  judge, 
and  as  he  judged  he  exulted.  He  was  thrilled  and 
carried  away,  and  he  was  moreover  intensely  curious 


NONA    VINCENT.  1/5 

to  know  what  had  happened  to  her,  by  what  unfath 
omable  art  she  had  managed  in  a  few  hours  to  effect 
such  a  change  of  base.  It  was  as  if  she  had  had  a 
revelation  of  Nona,  so  convincing  a  clearness  had 
been  breathed  upon  the  picture.  He  kept  himself 
quiet  in  the  entr'actes  —  he  would  speak  to  her  only 
at  the  end ;  but  before  the  play  was  half  over  the 
manager  burst  into  his  box. 

"  It's  prodigious,  what  she's  up  to ! "  cried  Mr. 
Loder,  almost  more  bewildered  than  gratified.  "  She 
has  gone  in  for  a  new  reading  —  a  blessed  somersault 
in  the  air  !  " 

"  Is  it  quite  different  ?  "  Wayworth  asked,  sharing 
his  mystification. 

"  Different  ?  Hyperion  to  a  satyr !  It's  devilish 
good,  my  boy  !  " 

"  It's  devilish  good,"  said  Wayworth,  "and  it's 
in  a  different  key  altogether  from  the  key  of  her 
rehearsal." 

"  I'll  run  you  six  months !  "  the  manager  declared ; 
and  he  rushed  round  again  to  the  actress,  leaving 
Wayworth  with  a  sense  that  she  had  already  pulled 
him  through.  She  had  with  the  audience  an  im 
mense  personal  success. 

When  he  went  behind,  at  the  end,  he  had  to  wait 
for  her  ;  she  only  showed  herself  when  she  was  ready 
to  leave  the  theatre.  Her  aunt  had  been  in  her 
dressing-room  with  her,  and  the  two  ladies  appeared 
together.  The  girl  passed  him  quickly,  motioning 
him  to  say  nothing  till  they  should  have  got  out  of 


176  NONA    VINCENT. 

the  place.  He  saw  that  she  was  immensely  excited, 
lifted  altogether  above  her  common  artistic  level. 
The  old  lady  said  to  him  :  "  You  must  come  home  to 
supper  with  us  :  it  has  been  all  arranged."  They 
had  a  brougham,  with  a  little  third  seat,  and  he  got 
into  it  with  them.  It  was  a  long  time  before  the 
actress  would  speak.  She  leaned  back  in  her  corner, 
giving  no  sign  but  still  heaving  a  little,  like  a  subsid 
ing  sea,  and  with  all  her  triumph  in  the  eyes  that 
shone  through  the  darkness.  The  old  lady  was  hushed 
to  awe,  or  at  least  to  discretion,  and  Wayworth  was 
happy  enough  to  wait.  He  had  really  to  wait  till 
they  had  alighted  at  Notting  Hill,  where  the  elder 
of  his  companions  went  to  see  that  supper  had  been 
attended  to. 

"I  was  better — I  was  better,"  said  Violet  Grey, 
throwing  off  her  cloak  in  the  little  drawing-room. 

"  You  were  perfection.  You'll  be  like  that  every 
night,  won't  you  ?  " 

She  smiled  at  him.  "  Every  night  ?  There  can 
scarcely  be  a  miracle  every  day." 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  a  miracle  ? " 

"  I've  had  a  revelation." 

Wayward  stared.     "  At  what  hour  ?  " 

"  The  right  hour  —  this  afternoon.  Just  in  time  to 
save  me  —  and  to  save  you." 

"  At  five  o'clock  ?     Do  you  mean  you  had  a  visit  ?  " 

"  She  came  to  me  —  she  stayed  two  hours." 

"  Two  hours  ?     Nona  Vincent?  " 

"  Mrs.  Alsager."  Violet  Grey  smiled  more  deeply. 
"  It's  the  same  thing." 


NONA    VINCENT.  1 77 

"  And  how  did  Mrs.  Alsager  save  you  ?  " 

"  By  letting  me  look  at  her.  By  letting  me  hear 
her  speak.  By  letting  me  know  her." 

"  And  what  did  she  say  to  you  ?  " 

"  Kind  things  —  encouraging,  intelligent  things." 

"  Ah,  the  dear  woman  !  "  Wayworth  cried. 

"You  ought  to  like  her  —  she  likes  you.  She  was 
just  what  I  wanted,"  the  actress  added. 

"  Do  you  mean  she  talked  to  you  about  Nona  ? " 

"  She  said  you  thought  she  was  like  her.  She  is 
—  she's  exquisite." 

"  She's  exquisite,"  Wayworth  repeated.  "  Do  you 
mean  she  tried  to  coach  you  ?  " 

"  Oh,  no  —  she  only  said  she  would  be  so  glad  if  it 
would  help  me  to  see  her.  And  I  felt  it  did  help  me. 
I  don't  know  what  took  place — she  only  sat  there, 
and  she  held  my  hand  and  smiled  at  me,  and  she  had 
tact  and  grace,  and  she  had  goodness  and  beauty, 
and  she  soothed  my  nerves  and  lighted  up  my  imagi 
nation.  Somehow  she  seemed  to  give  it  all  to  me. 
I  took  it —  I  took  it.  I  kept  her  before  me,  I  drank 
her  in.  For  the  first  time,  in  the  whole  study  of  the 
part,  I  had  my  model  —  I  could  make  my  copy.  All 
my  courage  came  back  to  me,  and  other  things  came 
that  I  hadn't  felt  before.  She  was  different  —  she 
was  delightful;  as  I've  said,  she  was  a  revelation. 
She  kissed  me  when  she  went  away  —  and  you  may 
guess  if  I  kissed  her.  We  were  awfully  affectionate, 
but  \V§  you  she  likes  !  "  said  Violet  Grey. 

Wayworth  had  never  been  more  interested  in  his 


178  NONA    VINCENT. 

life,  and  he  had  rarely  been  more  mystified.  "  Did 
she  wear  vague,  clear-coloured  garments  ?  "  he  asked, 
after  a  moment. 

Violet  Grey  stared,  laughed,  then  bade  him  go  in 
to  supper.  "  You  know  how  she  dresses  !  " 

He  was  very  well  pleased  at  supper,  but  he  was 
silent  and  a  little  solemn.  He  said  he  would  go  to 
see  Mrs.  Alsager  the  next  day.  He  did  so,  but  he 
was  told  at  her  door  that  she  had  returned  to  Tor 
quay.  She  remained  there  all  winter,  all  spring,  and 
the  next  time  he  saw  her  his  play  had  run  two  hun 
dred  nights  and  he  had  married  Violet  Grey.  His 
plays  sometimes  succeed,  but  his  wife  is  not  in  them 
now,  nor  in  any  others.  At  these  representations 
Mrs.  Alsager  continues  frequently  to  be  present. 


THE  CHAPERON. 


THE   CHAPERON. 


I. 


AN  old  lady,  in  a  high  drawing-room,  had  had 
her  chair  moved  close  to  the  fire,  where  she  sat  knit 
ting  and  \varming  her  knees.  She  was  dressed  in  deep 
mourning  ;  her  face  had  a  faded  nobleness,  tempered, 
however,  by  the  somewhat  illiberal  compression  as 
sumed  by  her  lips  in  obedience  to  something  that  was 
passing  in  her  mind.  She  was  far  from  the  lamp, 
but  though  her  eyes  were  fixed  upon  her  active  nee 
dles  she  was  not  looking  at  them.  What  she  really 
saw  was  quite  another  train  of  affairs.  The  room 
was  spacious  and  dim ;  the  thick  London  fog  had 
oozed  into  it  even  through  its  superior  defences. 
It  was  full  of  dusky,  massive,  valuable  things. 
The  old  lady  sat  motionless  save  for  the  regularity 
of  her  clicking  needles,  which  seemed  as  personal  to 
her  and  as  expressive  as  prolonged  fingers.  If  she 
was  thinking  something  out,  she  was  thinking  it 
thoroughly. 

When  she  looked  up,  on  the  entrance  of  a  girl 
of  twenty,  it  might  have  been  guessed  that  the 

181 


1 82  THE    CHAPERON. 

appearance  of  this  young  lady  was  not  an  interrup 
tion  of  her  meditation,  but  rather  a  contribution  to 
it.  The  young  lady,  who  was  charming  to  behold, 
was  also  in  deep  mourning,  which  had  a  freshness,  if 
mourning  can  be  fresh,  an  air  of  having  been  lately 
put  on.  She  went  straight  to  the  bell  beside  the 
chimney-piece  and  pulled  it,  while  in  her  other  hand 
she  held  a  sealed  and  directed  letter.  Her  companion 
glanced  in  silence  at  the  letter ;  then  she  looked  still 
harder  at  her  work.  The  girl  hovered  near  the  fire 
place,  without  speaking,  and  after  a  due,  a  dignified 
interval  the  butler  appeared  in  response  to  the  bell. 
The  time  had  been  sufficient  to  make  the  silence 
between  the  ladies  seem  long.  The  younger  one 
asked  the  butler  to  see  that  her  letter  should  be 
posted ;  and  after  he  had  gone  out  she  moved 
vaguely  about  the  room,  as  if  to  give  her  grand 
mother  —  for  such  was  the  elder  personage  —  a 
chance  to  begin  a  colloquy  of  which  she  herself 
preferred  not  to  strike  the  first  note.  As  equally 
with  herself  her  companion  was  on  the  face  of  it 
capable  of  holding  out,  the  tension,  though  it  was 
already  late  in  the  evening,  might  have  lasted  long. 
But  the  old  lady  after  a  little  appeared  to  recognise, 
a  trifle  ungraciously,  the  girl's  superior  resources. 

"  Have  you  written  to  your  mother  ?  " 

"  Yes,  but  only  a  few  lines,  to  tell  her  I  shall  come 
and  see  her  in  the  morning." 

"  Is  that  all  you've  got  to  say  ?  "  asked  the  grand 
mother. 


THE    CHAPERON.  183 

"  I  don't  quite  know  what  you  want  me  to  say." 

"  I  want  you  to  say  that  you've  made  up  your 
mind." 

"  Yes,  I've  done  that,  granny." 

"  You  intend  to  respect  your  father's  wishes  ?  " 

"  It  depends  upon  what  you  mean  by  respecting 
them.  I  do  justice  to  the  feelings  by  which  they 
were  dictated." 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  justice  ? "  the  old  lady 
retorted. 

The  girl  was  silent  a  moment ;  then  she  said : 
"You'll  see  my  idea  of  it." 

"  I  see  it  already !     You'll  go  and  live  with  her." 

"  I  shall  talk  the  situation  over  with  her  to-morrow 
and  tell  her  that  I  think  that  will  be  best." 

"  Best  for  her,  no  doubt !  " 

"What's  best  for  her  is  best  for  me." 

"  And  for  your  brother  and  sister  ?  "  As  the  girl 
made  no  reply  to  this  her  grandmother  went  on : 
"  What's  best  for  them  is  that  you  should  acknowl 
edge  some  responsibility  in  regard  to  them  and,  con 
sidering  how  young  they  are,  try  and  do  something 
for  them." 

"They  must  do  as  I've  done  —  they  must  act  for 
themselves.  They  have  their  means  now,  and  they're 
free." 

"  Free  ?     They're  mere  children." 

"  Let  me  remind  you  that  Eric  is  older  than  I." 

"  He  doesn't  like  his  mother,"  said  the  old  lady,  as 
if  that  were  an  answer. 


184  THE    CHAPERON. 

"  I  never  said  he  did.     And  she  adores  him." 

"  Oh,  your  mother's  adorations  !  " 

"  Don't  abuse  her  now,"  the  girl  rejoined,  after  a 
pause. 

The  old  lady  forbore  to  abuse  her,  but  she  made 
up  for  it  the  next  moment  by  saying :  "  It  will  be 
dreadful  for  Edith." 

"  What  will  be  dreadful  ?  " 

"Your  desertion  of  her." 

"  The  desertion's  on  her  side." 

"  Her  consideration  for  her  father  does  her 
honour." 

"  Of  course  I'm  a  brute,  ri  en  parlous  plus"  said  the 
girl.  "  We  must  go  our  respective  ways,"  she  added, 
in  a  tone  of  extreme  wisdom  and  philosophy. 

Her  grandmother  straightened  out  her  knitting 
and  began  to  roll  it  up.  "  Be  so  good  as  to  ring  for 
my  maid,"  she  said,  after  a  minute.  The  young  lady 
rang,  and  there  was  another  wait  and  another  con 
scious  hush.  Before  the  maid  came  her  mistress 
remarked :  "  Of  course  then  you'll  not  come  to  me, 
you  know." 

"  What  do  you  mean  by  '  coming  '  to  you  ?  " 

"  I  can't  receive  you  on  that  footing." 

"  She'll  not  come  with  me,  if  you  mean  that." 

"  I  don't  mean  that,"  said  the  old  lady,  getting  up 
as  her  maid  came  in.  This  attendant  took  her  work 
from  her,  gave  her  an  arm  and  helped  her  out  of  the 
room,  while  Rose  Tramore,  standing  before  the  fire 
and  looking  into  it,  faced  the  idea  that  her  grand- 


THE    CHAPERON.  185 

mother's  door  would  now  under  all  circumstances 
be  closed  to  her.  She  lost  no  time  however  in 
brooding  over  this  anomaly  :  it  only  added  energy  to 
her  determination  to  act.  All  she  could  do  to-night 
was  to  go  to  bed,  for  she  felt  utterly  weary.  She  had 
been  living,  in  imagination,  in  a  prospective  struggle, 
and  it  had  left  her  as  exhausted  as  a  real  fight. 
Moreover  this  was  the  culmination  of  a  crisis,  of  weeks 
of  suspense,  of  a  long,  hard  strain.  Her  father  had 
been  laid  in  his  grave  five  days  before,  and  that  morn 
ing  his  will  had  been  read.  In  the  afternoon  she  had 
got  Edith  off  to  St.  Leonard's  with  their  aunt  Julia, 
and  then  she  had  had  a  wretched  talk  with  Eric. 
Lastly,  she  had  made  up  her  mind  to  act  in  opposi 
tion  to  the  formidable  will,  to  a  clause  which  embodied 
if  not  exactly  a  provision,  a  recommendation  singularly 
emphatic.  She  went  to  bed  and  slept  the  sleep  of 
the  just. 

"  Oh,  my  dear,  how  charming !  I  must  take 
another  house !  "  It  was  in  these  words  that  her 
mother  responded  to  the  announcement  Rose  had 
just  formally  made  and  with  which  she  had  vaguely 
expected  to  produce  a  certain  dignity  of  effect.  In 
the  way  of  emotion  there  was  apparently  no  effect 
at  all,  and  the  girl  was  wise  enough  to  know  that 
this  was  not  simply  on  account  of  the  general  line 
of  non-allusion  taken  by  the  extremely  pretty  woman 
before  her,  who  looked  like  her  elder  sister.  Mrs. 
Tramore  had  never  manifested,  to  her  daughter,  the 
slightest  consciousness  that  her  position  was  pecu- 


1 86  THE    CHAPERON. 

liar;  but  the  recollection  of  something  more  than 
that  fine  policy  was  required  to  explain  such  a  fail 
ure  to  appreciate  Rose's  sacrifice.  It  was  simply  a 
fresh  reminder  that  she  had  never  appreciated  any 
thing,  that  she  was  nothing  but  a  tinted  and  stippled 
surface.  Her  situation  was  peculiar  indeed.  She 
had  been  the  heroine  of  a  scandal  which  had  grown 
dim  only  because,  in  the  eyes  of  the  London  world, 
it  paled  in  the  lurid  light  of  the  contemporaneous. 
That  attention  had  been  fixed  on  it  for  several  days, 
fifteen  years  before ;  there  had  been  a  high  relish  of 
the  vivid  evidence  as  to  his  wife's  misconduct  with 
which,  in  the  divorce-court,  Charles  Tramore  had 
judged  well  to  regale  a  cynical  public.  The  case 
was  pronounced  awfully  bad,  and  he  obtained  his 
decree.  The  folly  of  the  wife  had  been  inconceiva 
ble,  in  spite  of  other  examples :  she  had  quitted 
her  children,  she  had  followed  the  "  other  fellow " 
abroad.  The  other  fellow  hadn't  married  her,  not 
having  had  time :  he  had  lost  his  life  in  the  Medi 
terranean  by  the  capsizing  of  a  boat,  before  the 
prohibitory  term  had  expired. 

Mrs.  Tramore  had  striven  to  extract  from  this  acci 
dent  something  of  the  austerity  of  widowhood ;  but 
her  mourning  only  made  her  deviation  more  public, 
she  was  a  widow  whose  husband  was  awkwardly 
alive.  She  had  not  prowled  about  the  Continent 
on  the  classic  lines ;  she  had  come  back  to  London 
to  take  her  chance.  But  London  would  give  her  no 
chance,  would  have  nothing  to  say  to  her ;  as  many 


THE    CHAPERON.  187 

persons  had  remarked,  you  could  never  tell  how 
London  would  behave.  It  would  not  receive  Mrs. 
Tramore  again  on  any  terms,  and  when  she  was 
spoken  of,  which  now  was  not  often,  it  was  inveter- 
ately  said  of  her  that  she  went  nowhere.  Appar 
ently  she  had  not  the  qualities  for  which  London 
compounds;  though  in  the  cases  in  which  it  does 
compound  you  may  often  wonder  what  these  quali 
ties  are.  She  had  not  at  any  rate  been  successful : 
her  lover  was  dead,  her  husband  was  liked  and  her 
children  were  pitied,  for  in  payment  for  a  topic  Lon 
don  will  parenthetically  pity.  It  was  thought  inter 
esting  and  magnanimous  that  Charles  Tramore  had 
not  married  again.  The  disadvantage  to  his  children 
of  the  miserable  story  was  thus  left  uncorrected,  and 
this,  rather  oddly,  was  counted  as  his  sacrifice.  His 
mother,  whose  arrangements  were  elaborate,  looked 
after  them  a  great  deal,  and  they  enjoyed  a  mixture 
of  laxity  and  discipline  under  the  roof  of  their  aunt, 
Miss  Tramore,  who  was  independent,  having,  for 
reasons  that  the  two  ladies  had  exhaustively  dis 
cussed,  determined  to  lead  her  own  life.  She  had 
set  up  a  home  at  St.  Leonard's,  and  that  contracted 
shore  had  played  a  considerable  part  in  the  upbring 
ing  of  the  little  Tramores.  They  knew  about  their 
mother,  as  the  phrase  was,  but  they  didn't  know  her ; 
which  was  naturally  deemed  more  pathetic  for  them 
than  for  her.  She  had  a  house  in  Chester  Square 
arid  an  income  and  a  victoria  —  it  served  all  pur 
poses,  as  she  never  went  out  in  the  evening  —  and 


1 88  THE    CHAPERON. 

flowers  on  her  window-sills,  and  a  remarkable  ap 
pearance  of  youth.  The  income  was  supposed  to 
be  in  part  the  result  of  a  bequest  from  the  man 
for  whose  sake  she  had  committed  the  error  of  her 
life,  and  in  the  appearance  of  youth  there  was  a 
slightly  impertinent  implication  that  it  was  a  sort  of 
afterglow  of  the  same  connection. 

Her  children,  as  they  grew  older,  fortunately 
showed  signs  of  some  individuality  of  disposition. 
Edith,  the  second  girl,  clung  to  her  aunt  Julia ;  Eric, 
the  son,  clung  frantically  to  polo ;  while  Rose,  the 
elder  daughter,  appeared  to  cling  mainly  to  herself. 
Collectively,  of  course,  they  clung  to  their  father, 
whose  attitude  in  the  family  group,  however,  was 
casual  and  intermittent.  He  was  charming  and 
vague ;  he  was  like  a  clever  actor  who  often  didn't 
come  to  rehearsal.  Fortune,  which  but  for  that  one 
stroke  had  been  generous  to  him,  had  provided  him 
with  deputies  and  trouble-takers,  as  well  as  with 
whimsical  opinions,  and  a  reputation  for  excellent 
taste,  and  whist  at  his  club,  and  perpetual  cigars  on 
morocco  sofas,  and  a  beautiful  absence  of  purpose. 
Nature  had  thrown  in  a  remarkably  fine  hand,  which 
he  sometimes  passed  over  his  children's  heads  when 
they  were  glossy  from  the  nursery  brush.  On  Rose's 
eighteenth  birthday  he  said  to  her  that  she  might  go 
to  see  her  mother,  on  condition  that  her  visits  should 
be  limited  to  an  hour  each  time  and  to  four  in  the 
year.  She  was  to  go  alone  ;  the  other  children  were 
not  included  in  the  arrangement.  This  was  the 


THE    CHAPERON.  189 

result  of  a  visit  that  he  himself  had  paid  his  repudi 
ated  wife  at  her  urgent  request,  their  only  encounter 
during  the  fifteen  years.  The  girl  knew  as  much 
as  this  from  her  aunt  Julia,  who  was  full  of  tell 
tale  secrecies.  She  availed  herself  eagerly  of  the 
license,  and  in  course  of  the  period  that  elapsed 
before  her  father's  death  she  spent  with  Mrs.  Tra- 
more  exactly  eight  hours  by  the  watch.  Her  father, 
who  was  as  inconsistent  and  disappointing  as  he  was 
amiable,  spoke  to  her  of  her  mother  only  once  after 
wards.  This  occasion  had  been  the  sequel  of  her 
first  visit,  and  he  had  made  no  use  of  it  to  ask  what 
she  thought  of  the  personality  in  Chester  Square  or 
how  she  liked  it.  He  had  only  said  "  Did  she  take 
you  out?"  and  when  Rose  answered  "  Yes,  she  put 
me  straight  into  a  carriage  and  drove  me  up  and 
down  Bond  Street,"  had  rejoined  sharply  "  See  that 
that  never  occurs  again."  It  never  did,  but  once 
was  enough,  every  one  they  knew  having  happened 
to  be  in  Bond  Street  at  that  particular  hour. 

After  this  the  periodical  interview  took  place  in 
private,  in  Mrs.  Tramore's  beautiful  little  wasted 
drawing-room.  Rose  knew  that,  rare  as  these  occa 
sions  were,  her  mother  would  not  have  kept  her  "  all 
to  herself  "  had  there  been  anybody  she  could  have 
shown  her  to.  But  in  the  poor  lady's  social  void 
there  was  no  one ;  she  had  after  all  her  own  correct 
ness  and  she  consistently  preferred  isolation  to  infe 
rior  contacts.  So  her  daughter  was  subjected  only 
to  the  maternal ;  it  was  not  necessary  to  be  definite 


I9O  THE    CHAPERON. 

in  qualifying  that.  The  girl  had  by  this  time  a  col 
lection  of  ideas,  gathered  by  impenetrable  processes; 
she  had  tasted,  in  the  ostracism  of  her  ambiguous 
— parent,  of  the  acrid  fruit  of  the  tree  of  knowledge. 
She  not  only  had  an  approximate  vision  of  what 
every  one  had  done,  but  she  had  a  private  judgment 
for  each  case.  She  had  a  particular  vision  of  her 
father,  which  did  not  interfere  with  his  being  dear  to 
her,  but  which  was  directly  concerned  in  her  resolu 
tion,  after  his  death,  to  do  the  special  thing  he  had 
expressed  the  wish  she  should  not  do.  In  the  gen 
eral  estimate  her  grandmother  and  her  grandmother's 
money  had  their  place,  and  the  strong  probability 
that  any  enjoyment  of  the  latter  commodity  would 
now  be  withheld  from  her.  It  included  Edith's 
marked  inclination  to  receive  the  law,  and  doubtless 
eventually  a  more  substantial  memento,  from  Miss 
Tramore,  and  opened  the  question  whether  her  own 
course  might  not  contribute  to  make  her  sister's  ap 
pear  heartless.  The  answer  to  this  question  how 
ever  would  depend  on  the  success  that  might  attend 
her  own,  which  would  very  possibly  be  small.  Eric's 
attitude  was  eminently  simple ;  he  didn't  care  to 
know  people  who  didn't  know  Ids  people.  If  his 
mother  should  ever  get  back  into  society  perhaps  he 
would  take  her  up.  Rose  Tramore  had  decided  to 
do  what  she  could  to  bring  this  consummation  about; 
and  strangely  enough  —  so  mixed  were  her  supersti 
tions  and  her  heresies  —  a  large  part  of  her  motive 
lay  in  the  value  she  attached  to  such  a  consecration. 


THE    CHAPERON.  IQI 

Of  her  mother  intrinsically  she  thought  very  little 
now,  and  if  her  eyes  were  fixed  on  a  special  achieve 
ment  it  was  much  more  for  the  sake  of  that  achieve 
ment  and  to  satisfy  a  latent  energy  that  was  in  her 
than  because  her  heart  was  wrung  by  this  sufferer. 
Her  heart  had  not  been  wrung  at  all,  though  she  had 
quite  held  it  out  for  the  experience.  Her  purpose 
was  a  pious  game,  but  it  was  still  essentially  a  game. 
Among  the  ideas  I  have  mentioned  she  had  her  idea 
of  triumph.  She  had  caught  the  inevitable  note,  the 
pitch,  on  her  very  first  visit  to  Chester  Square.  She 
had  arrived  there  in  intense  excitement,  and  her 
excitement  was  left  on  her  hands  in  a  manner  that 
reminded  her  of  a  difficult  air  she  had  once  heard 
sung  at  the  opera  when  no  one  applauded  the  per 
former.  That  flatness  had  made  her  sick,  and  so  did 
this,  in  another  way.  A  part  of  her  agitation  pro 
ceeded  from  the  fact  that  her  aunt  Julia  had  told  her, 
in  the  manner  of  a  burst  of  confidence,  something 
she  was  not  to  repeat,  that  she  was  in  appearance 
the  very  image  of  the  lady  in  Chester  Square.  The 
motive  that  prompted  this  declaration  was  between 
aunt  Julia  and  her  conscience ;  but  it  was  a  great 
emotion  to  the  girl  to  find  her  entertainer  so  beautl 
ful.  She  was  tall  and  exquisitely  slim  ;  she  had  hair 
more  exactly  to  Rose  Tramore's  taste  than  any  other 
she  had  ever  seen,  even  to  every  detail  in  the  way  it 
was  dressed,  and  a  complexion  and  a  figure  of  the 
kind  that  are  always  spoken  of  as  "  lovely."  Her 
eyes  were  irresistible,  and  so  were  her  clothes,  though 


I Q2  THE    CHAPERON. 

the  clothes  were  perhaps  a  little  more  precisely  the 
right  thing  than  the  eyes.  Her  appearance  was 
marked  to  her  daughter's  sense  by  the  highest  dis 
tinction  ;  though  it  may  be  mentioned  that  this  had 
never  been  the  opinion  of  all  the  world.  It  was  a 
revelation  to  Rose  that  she  herself  might  look  a  little 
like  that.  She  knew  however  that  aunt  Julia  had 
not  seen  her  deposed  sister-in-law  for  a  long  time, 
and  she  had  a  general  impression  that  Mrs.  Tramore 
was  to-day  a  more  complete  production  —  for  in 
stance  as  regarded  her  air  of  youth  —  than  she  had 
ever  been.  There  was  no  excitement  on  her  side  — 
that  was  all  her  visitor's;  there  was  no  emotion  — 
that  was  excluded  by  the  plan,  to  say  nothing  of 
conditions  more  primal.  Rose  had  from  the  first  a 
glimpse  of  her  mother's  plan.  It  was  to  mention 
nothing  and  imply  nothing,  neither  to  acknowledge, 
to  explain  nor  to  extenuate.  She  would  leave  every 
thing  to  her  child ;  with  her  child  she  was  secure. 
She  only  wanted  to  get  back  into  society ;  she  would 
leave  even  that  to  her  child,  whom  she  treated  not 
as  a  high-strung  and  heroic  daughter,  a  creature  of 
exaltation,  of  devotion,  but  as  a  new,  charming,  clever, 
useful  friend,  a  little  younger  than  herself.  Already 
on  that  first  day  she  had  talked  about  dressmakers. 
Of  course,  poor  thing,  it  was  to  be  remembered  that 
in  her  circumstances  there  were  not  many  things  she 
could  talk  about.  "She  wants  to  go  out  again  ;  that's 
the  only  thing  in  the  wide  world  she  wants,"  Rose 
had  promptly,  compendiously  said  to  herself.  There 


THE    CHAPERON. 


had  been  a  sequel  to  this  observation,  uttered,  in 
intense  engrossment,  in  her  own  room  half  an  hour 
before  she  had,  on  the  important  evening,  made 
known  her  decision  to  her  grandmother  :  "  Then  I'll 
take  her  out  !  " 

"  She'll  drag  you  down,  she'll  drag  you  down  !  " 
Julia  Tramore  permitted  herself  to  remark  to  her 
niece,  the  next  day,  in  a  tone  of  feverish  prophecy. 

As  the  girl's  own  theory  was  that  all  the  dragging 
there  might  be  would  be  upward,  and  moreover 
administered  by  herself,  she  could  look  at  her  aunt 
with  a  cold  and  inscrutable  eye. 

"  Very  well,  then,  I  shall  be  out  of  your  sight,  from 
the  pinnacle  you  occupy,  and  I  sha'n't  trouble  you." 

"  Do  you  reproach  me  for  my  disinterested  exer 
tions,  for  the  way  I've  toiled  over  you,  the  way  I've 
lived  for  you  ?  "  Miss  Tramore  demanded. 

"  Don't  reproach  me  for  being  kind  to  my  mother 
and  I  won't  reproach  you  for  anything." 

"  She'll  keep  you  out  of  everything  —  she'll  make 
you  miss  everything,"  Miss  Tramore  continued. 

"Then  she'll  make  me  miss  a  great  deal  that's 
odious,"  said  the  girl. 

"  You're  too  young  for  such  extravagances,"  her 
aunt  declared. 

"  And  yet  Edith,  who  is  younger  than  I,  seems  to 
be  too  old  for  them  :  how  do  you  arrange  that  ?  My 
mother's  society  will  make  me  older,"  Rose  replied. 

"  Don't  speak  to  me  of  your  mother  ;  you  have  no 
mother." 


THE    CHAPERON. 


"  Then  if  I'm  an  orphan  I  must  settle  things  for 
myself." 

"Do  you  justify  her,  do  you  approve  of  her?" 
cried  Miss  Tramore,  who  was  inferior  to  her  niece  in 
capacity  for  retort  and  whose  limitations  made  the 
girl  appear  pert. 

Rose  looked  at  her  a  moment  in  silence  ;  then  she 
said,  turning  away:  "  I  think  she's  charming." 

"  And  do  you  propose  to  become  charming  in  the 
same  manner  ?  " 

"  Her  manner  is  perfect;  it  would  be  an  excellent 
model.  But  I  can't  discuss  my  mother  with  you." 

"You'll  have  to  discuss  her  with  some  other 
people  !  "  Miss  Tramore  proclaimed,  going  out  of  the 
room. 

Rose  wondered  whether  this  were  a  general  or  a 
particular  vaticination.  There  was  something  her 
aunt  might  have  meant  by  it,  but  her  aunt  rarely 
meant  the  best  thing  she  might  have  meant.  Miss 
Tramore  had  come  up  from  St.  Leonard's  in  re 
sponse  to  a  telegram  from  her  own  parent,  for  an 
occasion  like  the  present  brought  with  it,  for  a  few 
hours,  a  certain  relaxation  of  their  dissent.  "  Do 
what  you  can  to  stop  her,"  the  old  lady  had  said  ; 
but  her  daughter  found  that  the  most  she  could  do 
was  not  much.  They  both  had  a  baffled  sense  that 
Rose  had  thought  the  question  out  a  good  deal  fur 
ther  than  they  ;  and  this  was  particularly  irritating 
to  Mrs.  Tramore,  as  consciously  the  cleverer  of  the 
two.  A  question  thought  out  as  far  as  she  could 


THE    CHAPERON.  IQ5 

think  it  had  always  appeared  to  her  to  have  per 
formed  its  human  uses ;  she  had  never  encountered 
a  ghost  emerging  from  that  extinction.  Their  great 
contention  was  that  Rose  would  cut  herself  off ;  and 
certainly  if  she  wasn't  afraid  of  that  she  wasn't  afraid 
of  anything.  Julia  Tramore  could  only  tell  her 
mother  how  little  the  girl  was  afraid.  She  was 
already  prepared  to  leave  the  house,  taking  with  her 
the  possessions,  or  her  share  of  them,  that  had  accu 
mulated  there  during  her  father's  illness.  There  had 
been  a  going  and  coming  of  her  maid,  a  thumping 
about  of  boxes,  an  ordering  of  four-wheelers ;  it 
appeared  to  old  Mrs.  Tramore  that  something  of 
the  objectionableness,  the  indecency,  of  her  grand 
daughter's  prospective  connection  had  already  gath 
ered  about  the  place.  It  was  a  violation  of  the 
decorum  of  bereavement  which  was  still  fresh  there, 
and  from  the  indignant  gloom  of  the  mistress  of  the 
house  you  might  have  inferred  not  so  much  that  the 
daughter  was  about  to  depart  as  that  the  mother  was 
about  to  arrive.  There  had  been  no  conversation  on 
the  dreadful  subject  at  luncheon ;  for  at  luncheon  at 
Mrs.  Tramore's  (her  son  never  came  to  it)  there  were 
always,  even  after  funerals  and  other  miseries,  stray 
guests  of  both  sexes  whose  policy  it  was  to  be  cheer 
ful  and  superficial.  Rose  had  sat  down  as  if  nothing 
had  happened — nothing  worse,  that  is,  than  her 
father's  death ;  but  no  one  had  spoken  of  anything 
that  any  one  else  was  thinking  of. 

Before  she  left  the  house  a  servant  brought  her  a 


THE    CHAPERON. 


message  from  her  grandmother  —  the  old  lady  de 
sired  to  see  her  in  the  drawing-room.  She  had  on 
her  bonnet,  and  she  went  down  as  if  she  were  about 
to  step  into  her  cab.  Mrs.  Tramore  sat  there  with 
her  eternal  knitting,  from  which  she  forebore  even 
to  raise  her  eyes  as,  after  a  silence  that  seemed  to 
express  the  fulness  of  her  reprobation,  while  Rose 
stood  motionless,  she  began  :  "  I  wonder  if  you  really 
understand  what  you're  doing." 

"  I  think  so.     I'm  not  so  stupid." 

"  I  never  thought  you  were  ;  but  I  don't  know 
what  to  make  of  you  now.  You're  giving  up  every 
thing." 

The  girl  was  tempted  to  inquire  whether  her  grand 
mother  called  herself  "  everything  "  ;  but  she  checked 
this  question,  answering  instead  that  she  knew  she 
was  giving  up  much. 

"You're  taking  a  step  of  which  you  will  feel 
the  effect  to  the  end  of  your  days,"  Mrs.  Tramore 
went  on. 

"  In  a  good  conscience,  I  heartily  hope,"  said  Rose. 

"  Your  father's  conscience  was  good  enough  for 
his  mother  ;  it  ought  to  be  good  enough  for  his 
daughter." 

Rose  sat  down  —  she  could  afford  to  —  as  if  she 
wished  to  be  very  attentive  and  were  still  accessible 
to  argument.  But  this  demonstration  only  ushered 
in,  after  a  moment,  the  surprising  words  "  I  don't 
think  papa  had  any  conscience." 

"  What  in  the  name  of  all  that's  unnatural  do  you 


THE    CHAPERON. 


mean  ?  "  Mrs.  Tramore  cried,  over  her  glasses.  "  The 
dearest  and  best  creature  that  ever  lived  !  " 

"  He  was  kind,  he  had  charming  impulses,  he  was 
delightful.  But_he_n_eyer  reflected." 

Mrs.  Tramore  stared,  as  if  at  a  language  she  had 
never  heard,  a  farrago,  a  galimatias.  Her  life  was 
made  up  of  items,  but  she  had  never  had  to  deal, 
intellectually,  with  a  fine  shade.  Then  while  her 
needles,  which  had  paused  an  instant,  began  to  fly 
again,  she  rejoined  :  "  Do  you  know  what  you  are, 
my  dear  ?  You're  a  dreadful  little  prig.  Where  do 
you  pick  up  such  talk  ?  " 

"  Of  course  I  don't  mean  to  judge  between  them," 
Rose  pursued.  "  I  can  only  judge  between  my  mother 
and  myself.  Papa  couldn't  judge  for  me."  And 
with  this  she  got  up. 

"  One  would  think  you  were  horrid.  I  never 
thought  so  before." 

"  Thank  you  for  that." 

"You're  embarking  on  a  struggle  with  society," 
continued  Mrs.  Tramore,  indulging  in  an  unusual 
flight  of  oratory.  "  Society  will  put  you  in  your 
place." 

"  Hasn't  it  too  many  other  things  to  do  ?  "  asked 
the  girl. 

This  question  had  an  ingenuity  which  led  her 
grandmother  to  meet  it  with  a  merely  provisional 
and  somewhat  sketchy  answer.  "Your  ignorance 
would  be  melancholy  if  your  behaviour  were  not  so 
insane." 


198  THE    CHAPERON. 

"  Oh,  no ;  I  know  perfectly  what  she'll  do  !  "  Rose 
replied,  almost  gaily.  "  She'll  drag  me  down." 

"  She  won't  even  do  that,"  the  old  lady  declared 
contradictiously.  "  She'll  keep  you  forever  in  the 
same  dull  hole." 

"  I  shall  come  and  see  you,  granny,  when  I  want 
something  more  lively." 

"  You  may  come  if  you  like,  but  you'll  come  no 
further  than  the  door.  If  you  leave  this  house  now 
you  don't  enter  it  again." 

Rose  hesitated  a  moment.  "  Do  you  really  mean 
that  ? " 

"  You  may  judge  whether  I  choose  such  a  time  to 
joke." 

"  Good-bye,  then,"  said  the  girl. 

"  Good-bye." 

Rose  quitted  the  room  successfully  enough ;  but 
on  the  other  side  of  the  door,  on  the  landing,  she 
sank  into  a  chair  and  buried  her  face  in  her  hands. 
She  had  burst  into  tears,  and  she  sobbed  there  for  a 
moment,  trying  hard  to  recover  herself,  so  as  to  go 
downstairs  without  showing  any  traces  of  emotion, 
passing  before  the  servants  and  again  perhaps  be 
fore  aunt  Julia.  Mrs.  Tramore  was  too  old  to  cry ; 
she  could  only  drop  her  knitting  and,  for  a  long  time, 
sit  with  her  head  bowed  and  her  eyes  closed. 

Rose  had  reckoned  justly  with  her  aunt  Julia ; 
there  were  no  footmen,  but  this  vigilant  virgin  was 
posted  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs.  She  offered  no  chal 
lenge  however  ;  she  only  said  :  "  There's  some  one  in 


THE    CHAPERON. 

the  parlour  who  wants  to  see  you."  The  girl  demanded 
a  name,  but  Miss  Tramore  only  mouthed  inaudibly 
and  winked  and  waved.  Rose  instantly  reflected  that 
there  was  only  one  man  in  the  world  her  aunt  would 
look  such  deep  things  about.  "  Captain  Jay  ?  "  her 
own  eyes  asked,  while  Miss  Tramore's  were  those 
of  a  conspirator :  they  were,  for  a  moment,  the  only 
embarrassed  eyes  Rose  had  encountered  that  day. 
They  contributed  to  make  aunt  Julia's  further  re 
sponse  evasive,  after  her  niece  inquired  if  she  had 
communicated  in  advance  with  this  visitor.  Miss 
Tramore  merely  said  that  he  had  been  upstairs  with 
her  mother  —  hadn't  she  mentioned  it?  —  and  had 
been  waiting  for  her.  She  thought  herself  acute  in 
not  putting  the  question  of  the  girl's  seeing  him  before 
her  as  a  favour  to  him  or  to  herself ;  she  presented  it 
as  a  duty,  and  wound  up  with  the  proposition  :  "  It's 
not  fair  to  him,  it's  not  kind,  not  to  let  him  speak  to 
you  before  you  go." 

"What  does  he  want  to  say  ?  "  Rose  demanded. 

"  Go  in  and  find  out." 

She  really  knew,  for  she  had  found  out  before ; 
but  after  standing  uncertain  an  instant  she  went  in. 
"  The  parlour  "  was  the  name  that  had  always  been 
borne  by  a  spacious  sitting-room  downstairs,  an  apart 
ment  occupied  by  her  father  during  his  frequent 
phases  of  residence  in  Hill  Street  —  episodes  increas 
ingly  frequent  after  his  house  in  the  country  had,  in 
consequence,  as  Rose  perfectly  knew,  of  his  spending 
too  much  money,  been  disposed  of  at  a  sacrifice  which 


2OO  THE    CHAPERON. 

he  always  characterised  as  horrid.  He  had  been  left 
with  the  place  in  Hertfordshire  and  his  mother  with 
the  London  house,  on  the  general  understanding  that 
they  would  change  about ;  but  during  the  last  years 
the  community  had  grown  more  rigid,  mainly  at  his 
mother's  expense.  The  parlour  was  full  of  his  memory 
and  his  habits  and  his  things  —  his  books  and  pictures 
and  bibelots,  objects  that  belonged  now  to  Eric.  Rose 
had  sat  in  it  for  hours  since  his  death ;  it  was  the 
place  in  which  she  could  still  be  nearest  to  him.  But 
she  felt  far  from  him  as  Captain  Jay  rose  erect  on  her 
opening  the  door.  This  was  a  very  different  presence. 
He  had  not  liked  Captain  Jay.  She  herself  had,  but 
not  enough  to  make  a  great  complication  of  her 
father's  coldness.  This  afternoon  however  she  fore 
saw  complications.  At  the  very  outset  for  instance 
she  was  not  pleased  with  his  having  arranged  such  a 
surprise  for  her  with  her  grandmother  and  her  aunt. 
It  was  probably  aunt  Julia  who  had  sent  for  him ; 
her  grandmother  wouldn't  have  done  it.  It  placed 
him  immediately  on  their  side,  and  Rose  was  almost 
as  disappointed  at  this  as  if  she  had  not  known  it 
was  quite  where  he  would  naturally  be.  He  had 
never  paid  her  a  special  visit,  but  if  that  was  what 
he  wished  to  do  why  shouldn't  he  have  waited  till 
she  should  be  under  her  mother's  roof?  She  knew 
the  reason,  but  she  had  an  angry  prospect  of  enjoy 
ment  in  making  him  express  it.  She  liked  him 
enough,  after  all,  if  it  were  measured  by  the  idea  of 
what  she  could  make  him  do. 


THE    CHAPERON.  2OI 

In  Bertram  Jay  the  elements  were  surprisingly 
mingled ;  you  would  have  gone  astray,  in  reading 
him,  if  you  had  counted  on  finding  the  complements 
of  some  of  his  qualities.  He  would  not  however 
have  struck  you  in  the  least  as  incomplete,  for  in 
every  case  in  which  you  didn't  find  the  complement 
you  would  have  found  the  contradiction.  He  was  in 
the  Royal  Engineers,  and  was  tall,  lean  and  high- 
shouldered.  He  looked  every  inch  a  soldier,  yet 
there  were  people  who  considered  that  he  had  missed 
his  vocation  in  not  becoming  a  parson.  He  took  a 
public  interest  in  the  spiritual  life  of  the  army. 
Other  persons  still,  on  closer  observation,  would  have  s" 
felt  that  his  most  appropriate  field  was  neither  the 
army  nor  the  church,  but  simply  the  world  —  the 
social,  successful,  worldly  world.  If  he  had  a  sword 
in  one  hand  and  a  Bible  in  the  other  he  had  a  Court 
Guide  concealed  somewhere  about  his  person.  His 
profile  was  hard  and  handsome,  his  eyes  were  both 
cold  and  kind,  his  dark  straight  hair  was  impertur- 
bably  smooth  and  prematurely  streaked  with  grey. 
There  was  nothing  in  existence  that  he  didn't  take 
seriously.  He  had  a  first-rate  power  of  work  and 
an  ambition  as  minutely  organised  as  a  German  plan 
of  invasion.  His  only  real  recreation  was  to  go  to 
church,  but  he  went  to  parties  when  he  had  time. 
If  he  was  in  love  with  Rose  Tramore  this  was  dis 
tracting  to  him  only  in  the  same  sense  as  his  religion, 
and  it  was  included  in  that  department  of  his  ex 
tremely  sub-divided  life.  His  religion  indeed  was 


2O2  THE    CHAPERON. 

of  an  encroaching,  annexing  sort.  Seen  from  in 
front  he  looked  diffident  and  blank,  but  he  was  capa 
ble  of  exposing  himself  in  a  way  (to  speak  only  of 
the  paths  of  peace)  wholly  inconsistent  with  shyness. 
He  had  a  passion  for  instance  for  open-air  speaking, 
but  was  not  thought  on  the  whole  to  excel  in  it 
unless  he  could  help  himself  out  with  a  hymn.  In 
conversation  he  kept  his  eyes  on  you  with  a  kind  of 
colourless  candour,  as  if  he  had  not  understood  what 
you  were  saying  and,  in  a  fashion  that  made  many 
people  turn  red,  waited  before  answering.  This  was 
only  because  he  was  considering  their  remarks  in 
more  relations  than  they  had  intended.  He  had  in 
his  face  no  expression  whatever  save  the  one  just 
mentioned,  and  was,  in  his  profession,  already  very 
distinguished. 

He  had  seen  Rose  Tramore  for  the  first  time  on  a 
Sunday  of  the  previous  March,  at  a  house  in  the 
country  at  which  she  was  staying  with  her  father, 
and  five  weeks  later  he  had  made  her,  by  letter,  an 
offer  of  marriage.  She  showed  her  father  the  letter 
of  course,  and  he  told  her  that  it  would  give  him 
great  pleasure  that  she  should  send  Captain  Jay 
about  his  business.  "My  dear  child,"  he  said,  "we 
must  really  have  some  one  who  will  be  better  fun 
than  that."  Rose  had  declined  the  honour,  very  con 
siderately  and  kindly,  but  not  simply  because  her 
father  wished  it.  She  didn't  herself  wish  to  detach 
this  flower  from  the  stem,  though  when  the  young 
man  wrote  again,  to  express  the  hope  that  he  might 


THE    CHAPERON.  2O3 

hope  —  so  long  was  he  willing  to  wait  —  and  ask  if 
he  might  not  still  sometimes  see  her,  she  answered 
even  more  indulgently  than  at  first.  She  had  shown 
her  father  her  former  letter,  but  she  didn't  show 
him  this  one ;  she  only  told  him  what  it  contained, 
submitting  to  him  also  that  of  her  correspondent. 
Captain  Jay  moreover  wrote  to  Mr.  Tramore,  who 
replied  sociably,  but  so  vaguely  that  he  almost  neg 
lected  the  subject  under  discussion  —  a  communica 
tion  that  made  poor  Bertram  ponder  long.  He  could 
never  get  to  the  bottom  of  the  superficial,  and  all  the 
proprieties  and  conventions  of  life  were  profound  to 
him.  Fortunately  for  him  old  Mrs.  Tramore  liked 
him,  he  was  satisfactory  to  her  long-sightedness  ;  so 
that  a  relation  was  established  under  cover  of  which 
he  still  occasionally  presented  himself  in  Hill  Street 
—  presented  himself  nominally  to  the  mistress  of  the 
house.  He  had  had  scruples  about  the  veracity 
of  his  visits,  but  he  had  disposed  of  them ;  he  had 
scruples  about  so  many  things  that  he  had  had  to 
invent  a  general  way,  to  dig  a  central  drain.  Julia 
Tramore  happened  to  meet  him  when  she  came  up 
to  town,  and  she  took  a  view  of  him  more  benevolent 
than  her  usual  estimate  of  people  encouraged  by  her 
mother.  The  fear  of  agreeing  with  that  lady  was  a 
motive,  but  there  was  a  stronger  one,  in  this  particu 
lar  case,  in  the  fear  of  agreeing  with  her  niece,  who 
had  rejected  him.  His  situation  might  be  held  to 
have  improved  when  Mr.  Tramore  was  taken  so 
gravely  ill  that  with  regard  to  his  recovery  those 


2O4  THE    CHAPERON. 

about  him  left  their  eyes  to  speak  for  their  lips ;  and 
in  the  light  of  the  poor  gentleman's  recent  death  it 
was  doubtless  better  than  it  had  ever  been. 

He  was  only  a  quarter  of  an  hour  with  the  girl, 
but  this  gave  him  time  to  take  the  measure  of  it. 
After  he  had  spoken  to  her  about  her  bereavement, 
very  much  as  an  especially  mild  missionary  might 
have  spoken  to  a  beautiful  Polynesian,  he  let  her 
know  that  he  had  learned  from  her  companions  the 
very  strong  step  she  was  about  to  take.  This  led  to 
their  spending  together  ten  minutes  which,  to  her 
mind,  threw  more  light  on  his  character  than  any 
thing  that  had  ever  passed  between  them.  She  had 
always  felt  with  him  as  if  she  were  standing  on  an 
edge,  looking  down  into  something  decidedly  deep. 
To-day  the  impression  of  the  perpendicular  shaft 
was  there,  but  it  was  rather  an  abyss  of  confusion 
and  disorder  than  the  large  bright  space  in  which 
she  had  figured  everything  as  ranged  and  pigeon 
holed,  presenting  the  appearance  of  the  labelled 
shelves  and  drawers  at  a  chemist's.  He  discussed 
without  an  invitation  to  discuss,  he  appealed  without 
a  right  to  appeal.  He  was  nothing  but  a  suitor 
tolerated  after  dismissal,  but  he  took  strangely  for 
granted  a  participation  in  her  affairs.  He  assumed 
all  sorts  of  things  that  made  her  draw  back.  He 
implied  that  there  was  everything  now  to  assist  them 
in  arriving  at  an  agreement,  since  she  had  never 
informed  him  that  he  was  positively  objectionable; 
but  that  this  symmetry  would  be  spoiled  if  she  should 


THE    CHAPERON.  2O5 

not  be  willing  to  take  a  little  longer  to  think  of 
certain  consequences.  She  was  greatly  disconcerted 
when  she  saw  what  consequences  he  meant  and  at 
his  reminding  her  of  them.  What  on  earth  was  the 
use  of  a  lover  if  he  was  to  speak  only  like  one's 
grandmother  and  one's  aunt  ?  He  struck  her  as 
much  in  love  with  her  and  as  particularly  careful 
at  the  same  time  as  to  what  he  might  say.  He  never 
mentioned  her  mother;  he  only  alluded,  indirectly 
but  earnestly,  to  the  "step."  He  disapproved  of  it 
altogether,  took  an  unexpectedly  prudent,  politic 
view  of  it.  He  evidently  also  believed  that  she 
would  be  dragged  down ;  in  other  words  that  she 
v  would  not  be  asked  out.  It  \vas  his  idea  that  her 
mother  would  contaminate  her,  so  that  he  should  find 
himself  interested  in  a  young  person  discredited  and 
virtually  unmarriageable.  All  this  was  more  obvious 
to  him  than  the  consideration  that  a  daughter  should 
be  merciful.  Where  was  his  religion  if  he  under 
stood  mercy  so  little,  and  where  were  his  talent  and 
his  courage  if  he  were  so  miserably  afraid  of  trump 
ery  social  penalties  ?  Rose's  heart  sank  \vhen  she 
reflected  that  a  man  supposed  to  be  first-rate 
hadn't  guessed  that  rather  than  not  do  what  she 
could  for  her  mother  she  would  give  up  all  the 
Engineers  in  the  world.  She  became  aware  that  she 
probably  would  have  been  moved  to  place  her  hand 
in  his  on  the  spot  if  he  had  come  to  her  saying 
"  Your  idea  is  the  right  one  ;  put  it  through  at  every 
cost."  She  couldn't  discuss  this  with  him,  though  he 


2O6  THE    CHAPERON. 

impressed  her  as  having  too  much  at  stake  for  her  to 
treat  him  with  mere  disdain.  She  sickened  at  the 
revelation  that  a  gentleman  could  see  so  much  in 
mere  vulgarities  of  opinion,  and  though  she  uttered 
as  few  words  as  possible,  conversing  only  in  sad 
smiles  and  headshakes  and  in  intercepted  movements 
toward  the  door,  she  happened,  in  some  unguarded 
lapse  from  her  reticence,  to  use  the  expression  that 
she  was  disappointed  in  him.  He  caught  at  it  and, 
seeming  to  drop  his  field-glass,  pressed  upon  her  with 
nearer,  tenderer  eyes. 

"  Can  I  be  so  happy  as  to  believe,  then,  that  you 
had  thought  of  me  with  some  confidence,  with  some 
faith  ? " 

"  If  you  didn't  suppose  so,  what  is  the  sense  of 
this  visit  ?  "  Rose  asked. 

"  One  can  be  faithful  without  reciprocity,"  said  the 
young  man.  "  I  regard  you  in  a  light  which  makes 
me  want  to  protect  you  even  if  I  have  nothing  to 
gain  by  it." 

"  Yet  you  speak  as  if  you  thought  you  might  keep 
me  for  yourself." 

"  For  yourself.     I  don't  want  you  to  suffer." 

"  Nor  to  suffer  yourself  by  my  doing  so,"  said 
Rose,  looking  down. 

"Ah,  if  you  would  only  marry  me  next  month!" 
he  broke  out  inconsequently. 

"  And  give  up  going  to  mamma  ?  "  Rose  waited 
to  see  if  he  would  say  "What  need  that  matter? 
Can't  your  mother  come  to  us  ?  "  But  he  said  noth 
ing  of  the  sort ;  he  only  answered  — 


THE    CHAPERON.  2O/ 

"She  surely  would  be  sorry  to  interfere  with  the 
exercise  of  any  other  affection  which  I  might  have 
the  bliss  of  believing  that  you  are  now  free,  in  how 
ever  small  a  degree,  to  entertain." 

Rose  knew  that  her  mother  wouldn't  be  sorry  at 
all ;  but  she  contented  herself  with  rejoining,  her 
hand  on  the  door :  "  Good-bye.  I  sha'n't  suffer. 
I'm  not  afraid." 

"You  don't  know  how  terrible,  how  cruel,  the 
world  can  be." 

"  Yes,  I  do  know.     I  know  everything  !  " 

The  declaration  sprang  from  her  lips  in  a  tone 
which  made  him  look  at  her  as  he  had  never  looked 
before,  as  if  he  saw  something  new  in  her  face,  as  if 
he  had  never  yet  known  her.  He  hadn't  displeased 
her  so  much  but  that  she  would  like  to  give  him  that 
impression,  and  since  she  felt  that  she  was  doing  so 
she  lingered  an  instant  for  the  purpose.  It  enabled 
her  to  see,  further,  that  he  turned  red ;  then  to  be 
come  aware  that  a  carriage  had  stopped  at  the  door. 
Captain  Jay's  eyes,  from  where  he  stood,  fell  upon 
this  arrival,  and  the  nature  of  their  glance  made 
Rose  step  forward  to  look.  Her  mother  sat  there, 
brilliant,  conspicuous,  in  the  eternal  victoria,  and  the 
footman  was  already  sounding  the  knocker.  It  had 
been  no  part  of  the  arrangement  that  she  should 
come  to  fetch  her ;  it  had  been  out  of  the  question  — 
a  stroke  in  such  bad  taste  as  would  have  put  Rose 
in  the  wrong.  The  girl  had  never  dreamed  of  it,  but 
somehow,  suddenly,  perversely,  she  was  glad  of  it 


2O8  THE    CHAPERON. 

now ;  she  even  hoped  that  her  grandmother  and  her 
aunt  were  looking  out  upstairs. 

"  My  mother  has  come  for  me.  Good-bye,"  she 
repeated ;  but  this  time  her  visitor  had  got  between 
her  and  the  door. 

"  Listen  to  me  before  you  go.  I  will  give  you  a 
life's  devotion,"  the  young  man  pleaded.  He  really 
barred  the  way. 

She  wondered  whether  her  grandmother  had  told 
him  that  if  her  flight  were  not  prevented  she  would 
forfeit  money.  Then,  vividly,  it  came  over  her  that 
this  would  be  what  he  was  occupied  with.  "  I  shall 
never  think  of  you  —  let  me  go!"  she  cried,  with 
passion. 

Captain  Jay  opened  the  door,  but  Rose  didn't  see 
his  face,  and  in  a  moment  she  was  out  of  the  house. 
Aunt  Julia,  who  was  sure  to  have  been  hovering,  had 
taken  flight  before  the  profanity  of  the  knock. 

"  Heavens,  dear,  where  did  you  get  your  mourn 
ing  ? "  the  lady  in  the  victoria  asked  of  her  daughter 
as  they  drove  away. 


II. 


LADY  MARESFIELD  had  given  her  boy  a  push  in  his 
plump  back  and  had  said  to  him,  "  Go  and  speak  to 
her  now;  it's  your  chance."  She  had  for  a  long 
time  wanted  this  scion  to  make  himself  audible  to 
Rose  Tramore,  but  the  opportunity  was  not  easy  to 
come  by.  The  case  was  complicated.  Lady  Mares- 


THE    CHAPERON.  2OQ 

field  had  four  daughters,  of  whom  only  one  was  mar 
ried.  It  so  happened  moreover  that  this  one,  Mrs. 
Vaughan-Vesey,  the  only  person  in  the  world  her 
mother  was  afraid  of,  was  the  most  to  be  reckoned 
with.  The  Honourable  Guy  was  in  appearance  all 
his  mother's  child,  though  he  was  really  a  simpler 
soul.  He  was  large  and  pink ;  large,  that  is,  as  to 
everything  but  the  eyes,  which  were  diminishing 
points,  and  pink  as  to  everything  but  the  hair,  which 
was  comparable,  faintly,  to  the  hue  of  the  richer 
rose.  He  had  also,  it  must  be  conceded,  very  small 
neat  teeth,  which  made  his  smile  look  like  a  young 
lady's.  He  had  no  wish  to  resemble  any  such 
person,  but  he  was  perpetually  smiling,  and  he 
smiled  more  than  ever  as  he  approached  Rose  Tra- 
more,  who,  looking  altogether,  to  his  mind,  as  a 
pretty  girl  should,  and  wearing  a  soft  white  opera- 
cloak  over  a  softer  black  dress,  leaned  alone  against 
the  wall  of  the  vestibule  at  Covent  Garden  while,  a 
few  paces  off,  an  old  gentleman  engaged  her  mother 
in  conversation.  Madame  Patti  had  been  singing, 
and  they  were  all  waiting  for  their  carriages.  To 
their  ears  at  present  came  a  vociferation  of  names 
and  a  rattle  of  wheels.  The  air,  through  banging 
doors,  entered  in  damp,  warm  gusts,  heavy  with  the 
stale,  slightly  sweet  taste  of  the  London  season  when 
the  London  season  is  overripe  and  spoiling. 

Guy  Mangier  had  only  three  minutes  to  reestablish 
an  interrupted  acquaintance  with  our  young  lady. 
He  reminded  her  that  he  had  danced  with  her  the 


2IO  THE    CHAPERON. 

year  before,  and  he  mentioned  that  he  knew  her 
brother.  His  mother  had  lately  been  to  see  old  Mrs. 
Tramore,  but  this  he  did  not  mention,  not  being 
aware  of  it.  That  visit  had  produced,  on  Lady 
Maresfield's  part,  a  private  crisis,  engendered  ideas. 
One  of  them  was  that  the  grandmother  in  Hill  Street 
had  really  forgiven  the  wilful  girl  much  more  than 
she  admitted.  Another  was  that  there  would  still  be 
some  money  for  Rose  when  the  others  should  come 
into  theirs.  Still  another  was  that  the  others  would 
come  into  theirs  at  no  distant  date ;  the  old  lady  was 
so  visibly  going  to  pieces.  There  were  several  more 
besides,  as  for  instance  that  Rose  had  already  fifteen 
hundred  a  year  from  her  father.  The  figure  had 
been  betrayed  in  Hill  Street ;  it  was  part  of  the 
proof  of  Mrs.  Tramore's  decrepitude.  Then  there 
was  an  equal  amount  that  her  mother  had  to  dispose 
of  and  on  which  the  girl  could  absolutely  count, 
though  of  course  it  might  involve  much  waiting,  as 
the  mother,  a  person  of  gross  insensibility,  evidently 
wouldn't  die  of  cold-shouldering.  Equally  definite, 
to  do  it  justice,  was  the  conception  that  Rose 
was  in  truth  remarkably  good  looking,  and  that 
what  she  had  undertaken  to  do  showed,  and  would 
show  even  should  it  fail,  cleverness  of  the  right  sort. 
Cleverness  of  the  right  sort  was  exactly  the  quality 
that  Lady  Maresfield  prefigured  as  indispensable  in 
a  young  lady  to  whom  she  should  marry  her  second 
son,  over  whose  own  deficiencies  she  flung  the  veil 
of  a  maternal  theory  that  his  cleverness  was  of  a 


THE    CHAPERON.  211 

sort  that  was  wrong.  Those  who  knew  him  less 
well  were  content  to  wish  that  he  might  not  con 
ceal  it  for  such  a  scruple.  This  enumeration  of  his 
mother's  views  does  not  exhaust  the  list,  and  it  was 
in  obedience  to  one  too  profound  to  be  uttered  even 
by  the  historian  that,  after  a  very  brief  delay,  she 
decided  to  move  across  the  crowded  lobby.  Her 
daughter  Bessie  was  the  only  one  with  her ;  Maggie 
was  dining  with  the  Vaughan-Veseys,  and  Fanny  was 
not  of  an  age.  Mrs.  Tramore  the  younger  showed 
only  an  admirable  back  —  her  face  was  to  her  old 
gentleman  —  and  Bessie  had  drifted  to  some  other 
people ;  so  that  it  was  comparatively  easy  for  Lady 
Maresfield  to  say  to  Rose,  in  a  moment :  "  My  dear 
child,  are  you  never  coming  to  see  us  ? " 

"  We  shall  be  delighted  to  come  if  you'll  ask  us," 
Rose  smiled. 

Lady  Maresfield  had  been  prepared  for  the  plural 
number,  and  she  was  a  woman  whom  it  took  many 
plurals  to  disconcert.  "  I'm  sure  Guy  is  longing  for 
another  dance  with  you,"  she  rejoined,  with  the  most 
unblinking  irrelevance. 

"  I'm  afraid  we're  not  dancing  again  quite  yet," 
said  Rose,  glancing  at  her  mother's  exposed  shoul 
ders,  but  speaking  as  if  they  were  muffled  in  crape. 

Lady  Maresfield  leaned  her  head  on  one  side  and 
seemed  almost  wistful.  "  Not  even  at  my  sister's 
ball  ?  She's  to  have  something  next  week.  She'll 
write  to  you." 

Rose   Tramore,   on   the  spot,   looking   bright  but 


212  THE    CHAPERON. 

vague,  turned  three  or  four  things  over  in  her  mind. 
She  remembered  that  the  sister  of  her  interlocutress 
was  the  proverbially  rich  Mrs.  Bray,  a  bankeress  or  a 
breweress  or  a  builderess,  who  had  so  big  a  house 
that  she  couldn't  fill  it  unless  she  opened  her  doors, 
or  her  mouth,  very  wide.  Rose  had  learnt  more 
about  London  society  during  these  lonely  months 
with  her  mother  than  she  had  ever  picked  up  in  Hill 
Street.  The  younger  Mrs.  Tramore  was  a  mine  of 
commeragcs,  and  she  had  no  need  to  go  out  to  bring 
home  the  latest  intelligence.  At  any  rate  Mrs.  Bray 
might  serve  as  the  end  of  a  wedge.  "  Oh,  I  dare  say 
we  might  think  of  that,"  Rose  said.  "  It  would  be 
very  kind  of  your  sister." 

"  Guy'll  think  of  it,  won't  you,  Guy  ? "  asked  Lady 
Maresfield. 

"Rather!"  Guy  responded,  with  an  intonation  as 
fine  as  if  he  had  learnt  it  at  a  music  hall ;  while  at 
the  same  moment  the  name  of  his  mother's  carriage 
was  bawled  through  the  place.  Mrs.  Tramore  had 
parted  with  her  old  gentleman ;  she  turned  again  to 
her  daughter.  Nothing  occurred  but  what  always 
occurred,  which  was  exactly  this  absence  of  every 
thing —  a  universal  lapse.  She  didn't  exist,  even  for 
a  second,  to  any  recognising  eye.  The  people  who 
looked  at  her —  of  course  there  were  plenty  of  those 
—  were  only  the  people  who  didn't  exist  for  hers. 
Lady  Maresfield  surged  away  on  her  son's  arm. 

It  was  this  noble  matron  herself  who  wrote,  the 
next  day,  inclosing  a  card  of  invitation  from  Mrs. 


THE    CHAPERON.  213 

Bray  and  expressing  the  hope  that  Rose  would  come 
and  dine  and  let  her  ladyship  take  her.  She  should 
have  only  one  of  her  own  girls  ;  Gwendolen  Vesey 
was  to  take  the  other.  Rose  handed  both  the  note 
and  the  card  in  silence  to  her  mother ;  the  latter  ex 
hibited  only  the  name  of  Miss  Tramore.  "  You  had 
much  better  go,  dear,"  her  mother  said  ;  in  answer 
to  which  Miss  Tramore  slowly  tore  up  the  docu 
ments,  looking  with  clear,  meditative  eyes  out  of  the 
window.  Her  mother  always  said  "  You  had  better 
go"  —there  had  been  other  incidents  —  and  Rose 
had  never  even  once  taken  account  of  the  observa 
tion.  She  would  make  no  first  advances,  only  plenty 
of  second  ones,  and,  condoning  no  discrimination, 
would  treat  no  omission  as  venial.  She  would  keep 
all  concessions  till  afterwards ;  then  she  would  make 
them  one  by  one.  Fighting  society  was  quite  as 
hard  as  her  grandmother  had  said  it  would  be ;  but 
there  was  a  tension  in  it  which  made  the  dreariness 
vibrate  —  the  dreariness  of  such  a  winter  as  she  had 
just  passed.  Her  companion  had  cried  at  the  end  of 
it,  and  she  had  cried  all  through  ;  only  her  tears  had 
been  private,  while  her  mother's  had  fallen  once 
for  all,  at  luncheon  on  the  bleak  Easter  Monday  — 
produced  by  the  way  a  silent  survey  of  the  deadly 
square  brought  home  to  her  that  every  creature  but 
themselves  was  out  of  town  and  having  tremendous 
fun.  Rose  felt  that  it  was  useless  to  attempt  to 
explain  simply  by  her  mourning  this  severity  of  soli 
tude;  for  if  people  didn't  go  to  parties  (at  least  a  few 


214  THE    CHAPERON. 

didn't)  for  six  months  after  their  father  died,  this 
was  the  very  time  other  people  took  for  coming  to 
see  them.  It  was  not  too  much  to  say  that  during 
this  first  winter  of  Rose's  period  with  her  mother 
she  had  no  communication  whatever  with  the  world. 
It  had  the  effect  of  making  her  take  to  reading  the 
new  American  books  :  she  wanted  to  see  how  girls 
got  on  by  themselves.  She  had  never  read  so  much 
before,  and  there  was  a  legitimate  indifference  in  it 
when  topics  failed  with  her  mother.  They  often 
failed  after  the  first  days,  and  then,  while  she  bent 
over  instructive  volumes,  this  lady,  dressed  as  if  for 
an  impending  function,  sat  on  the  sofa  and  watched 
her.  Rose  was  not  embarrassed  by  such  an  appear 
ance,  for  she  could  reflect  that,  a  little  before,  her 
companion  had  not  even  a  girl  who  had  taken  refuge 
in  queer  researches  to  look  at.  She  was  moreover 
used  to  her  mother's  attitude  by  this  time.  She 
had  her  own  description  of  it :  it  was  the  attitude 
of  waiting  for  the  carriage.  If  they  didn't  go  out  it 
was  not  that  Mrs.  Tramore  was  not  ready  in  time, 
and  Rose  had  even  an  alarmed  prevision  of  their 
some  day  always  arriving  first.  Mrs.  Tramore's  con 
versation  at  such  moments  was  abrupt,  inconsequent 
and  personal.  She  sat  on  the  edge  of  sofas  and 
chairs  and  glanced  occasionally  at  the  fit  of  her 
gloves  (she  was  perpetually  gloved,  and  the  fit  was  a 
thing  it  was  melancholy  to  see  wasted),  as  people 
do  who  are  expecting  guests  to  dinner.  Rose  used 
almost  to  fancy  herself  at  times  a  perfunctory 
husband  on  the  other  side  of  the  fire. 


THE    CHAPERON.  21$ 

What  she  was  not  yet  used  to  —  there  was  still  a 
charm  in  it  —  was  her  mother's  extraordinary  tact. 
During  the  years  they  lived  together  they  never  had 
a  discussion  ;  a  circumstance  all  the  more  remarkable 
since  if  the  girl  had  a  reason  for  sparing  her  com 
panion  (that  of  being  sorry  for  her)  Mrs.  Tramore 
had  none  for  sparing  her  child.  She  only  showed  in 
doing  so  a  happy  instinct  —  the  happiest  thing  about 
her.  She  took  in  perfection  a  course  which  repre 
sented  everything  and  covered  everything ;  she  ut 
terly  abjured  all  authority.  She  testified  to  her 
abjuration  in  hourly  ingenious,  touching  ways.  In 
this  manner  nothing  had  to  be  talked  over,  which 
was  a  mercy  all  round.  The  tears  on  Easter  Monday 
were  merely  a  nervous  gust,  to  help  show  she  was 
not  a  Christmas  doll  from  the  Burlington  Arcade  ; 
and  there  was  no  lifting  up  of  the  repentant  Mag- 
— -dalen,  no  uttered  remorse  for  the  former  abandonment 
of  children.  Of  the  way  she  could  treat  her  children 
her  demeanour  to  this  one  was  an  example  ;  it  was  an 
uninterrupted  appeal  to  her  eldest  daughter  for  direc 
tion.  She  took  the  law  from  Rose  in  every  circum 
stance,  and  if  you  had  noticed  these  ladies  without 
knowing  their  history  you  would  have  wondered 
what  tie  was  fine  enough  to  make  maturity  so  re 
spectful  to  youth.  No  mother  was  ever  so  filial  as 
Mrs.  Tramore,  and  there  had  never  been  such  a 
difference  of  position  between  sisters.  Not  that  the 
elder  one  fawned,  which  would  have  been  fearful  ; 
she  only  renounced  —  whatever  she  had  to  renounce. 


2l6  THE    CHAPERON. 

If  the  amount  was  not  much  she  at  any  rate  made  no 
scene  over  it.  Her  hand  was  so  light  that  Rose  said 
of  her  secretly,  in  vague  glances  at  the  past,  "  No 
wonder  people  liked  her!  "  She  never  characterised 
the  old  element  of  interference  with  her  mother's 
respectability  more  definitely  than  as  "  people." 
They  were  people,  it  was  true,  for  whom  gentleness 
must  have  been  everything  and  who  didn't  demand 
a  variety  of  interests.  The  desire  to  "  go  out "  was 
the  one  passion  that  even  a  closer  acquaintance  with 
her  parent  revealed  to  Rose  Tramore.  She  marvelled 
at  its  strength,  in  the  light  of  the  poor  lady's  history  : 
there  was  comedy  enough  in  this  unquenchable  flame 
on  the  part  of  a  woman  who  had  known  such  misery. 
She  had  drunk  deep  of  every  dishonour,  but  the  bitter 
cup  had  left  her  with  a  taste  for  lighted  candles,  for 
squeezing  up  staircases  and  hooking  herself  to  the 
human  elbow.  Rose  had  a  vision  of  the  future  years 
in  which  this  taste  would  grow  with  restored  exercise 
—  of  her  mother,  in  a  long-tailed  dress,  jogging  on 
and  on  and  on,  jogging  further  and  further  from  her 
sins,  through  a  century  of  the  "Morning  Post"  and 
down  the  fashionable  avenue  of  time.  She  herself 
would  then  be  very  old  —  she  herself  would  be  dead. 
Mrs.  Tramore  would  cover  a  span  of  life  for  which 
such  an  allowance  of  sin  was  small.  The  girl  could 
laugh  indeed  now  at  that  theory  of  her  being  dragged 
down.  If  one  thing  were  more  present  to  her  than 
another  it  was  the  very  desolation  of  their  propriety. 
As  she  glanced  at  her  companion,  it  sometimes 


THE    CHAPERON.  2  I/ 

seemed  to  her  that  if  she  had  been  a  bad  woman  she 
would  have  been  worse  than  that.  There  were  com 
pensations  for  being  "cut"  which  Mrs.  Tramore  too 
much  neglected. 

The  lonely  old  lady  in  Hill  Street  —  Rose  thought 
of  her  that  way  now  —  was  the  one  person  to  whom 
she  was  ready  to  say  that  she  would  come  to  her  on 
any  terms.  She  wrote  this  to  her  three  times  over, 
and  she  knocked  still  oftener  at  her  door.  But  the 
old  lady  answered  no  letters  ;  if  Rose  had  remained 
in  Hill  Street  it  would  have  been  her  own  function 
to  answer  them  ;  and  at  the  door,  the  butler,  whom 
the  girl  had  known  for  ten  years,  considered  her, 
when  he  told  her  his  mistress  was  not  at  home,  quite 
as  he  might  have  considered  a  young  person  who  had 
come  about  a  place  and  of  whose  eligibility  he  took  a 
negative  view.  That  was  Rose's  one  pang,  that  she 
probably  appeared  rather  heartless.  Her  aunt  Julia 
had  gone  to  Florence  with  Edith  for  the  winter,  on 
purpose  to  make  her  appear  more  so ;  for  Miss 
Tramore  was  still  the  person  most  scandalised  by  her 
secession.  Edith  and  she,  doubtless,  often  talked 
over  in  Florence  the  destitution  of  the  aged  victim 
in  Hill  Street.  Eric  never  came  to  see  his  sister, 
because,  being  full  both  of  family  and  of  personal 
feeling,  he  thought  she  really  ought  to  have  stayed 
with  his  grandmother.  If  she  had  had  such  an 
appurtenance  all  to  herself  she  might  have  done 
what  she  liked  with  it ;  but  he  couldn't  forgive  such 
a  want  of  consideration  for  anything  of  his^_  There 


2l8  THE    CHAPERON. 

were  moments  when  Rose  would  have  been  ready  to 
take  her  hand  from  the  plough  and  insist  upon  rein- 
tegratioH,  if  only  the  fierce  voice  of  the  old  house 
had  allowed  people  to  look  her  up.  But  she  read, 
ever  so  clearly,  that  her  grandmother  had  made  this 
a  question  of  loyalty  to  seventy  years  of  virtue. 
Mrs.  Tramore's  forlornness  didn't  prevent  her  draw 
ing-room  from  being  a  very  public  place,  in  which 
Rose  could  hear  certain  words  reverberate:  "Leave 
her  alone ;  it's  the  only  way  to  see  how  long  she'll 
hold  out."  The  old  woman's  visitors  were  people 
who  didn't  wish  to  quarrel,  and  the  girl  was  conscious 
that  if  they  had  not  let  her  alone  —  that  is  if  they 
had  come  to  her  from  her  grandmother  —  she  might 
perhaps  not  have  held  out.  She  had  no  friends  quite 
of  her  own  ;  she  had  not  been  brought  up  to  have 
them,  and  it  would  not  have  been  easy  in  a  house 
which  two  such  persons  as  her  father  and  his  mother 
divided  between  them.  Her  father  disapproved  of 
crude  intimacies,  and  all  the  intimacies  of  youth  were 
crude.  He  had  married  at  five-and-twenty  and  could 
testify  to  such  a  truth.  Rose  felt  that  she  shared 
even  Captain  Jay  with  her  grandmother ;  she  had 
seen  what  he  was  worth.  Moreover,  she  had  spoken 
to  him  at  that  last  moment  in  Hill  Street  in  a  way 
which,  taken  with  her  former  refusal,  made  it  impos 
sible  that  he  should  come  near  her  again.  She 
hoped  he  went  to  see  his  protectress  :  he  could  be  a 
kind  of  substitute  and  administer  comfort. 

It    so  happened,  however,  that  the  day  after  she 


THE    CHAPERON.  2IQ 

threw  Lady  Maresfield's  invitation  into  the  waste- 
paper  basket  she  received  a  visit  from  a  certain  Mrs. 
Donovan,  whom  she  had  occasionally  seen  in  Hill 
Street.  She  vaguely  knew  this  lady  for  a  busybody, 
but  she  was  in  a  situation  which  even  busybodies 
might  alleviate.  Mrs.  Donovan  was  poor,  but  honest 
-  so  scrupulously  honest  that  she  was  perpetually 
returning  visits  she  had  never  received.  She  was 
always  clad  in  weather-beaten  sealskin,  and  had  an 
odd  air  of  being  prepared  for  the  worst,  which  was 
borne  out  by  her  denying  that  she  was  Irish.  She 
was  of  the  English  Donovans. 

"Dear  child,  won't  you  go  out  with  me?"  she 
asked. 

Rose  looked  at  her  a  moment  and  then  rang  the 
bell.  She  spoke  of  something  else,  without  answer 
ing  the  question,  and  when  the  servant  came  she  said  : 
"  Please  tell  Mrs.  Tramore  that  Mrs.  Donovan  has 
come  to  see  her." 

"  Oh,  that'll  be  delightful  ;  only  you  mustn't  tell 
your  grandmother  !  "  the  visitor  exclaimed. 

"Tell  her  what?" 

"That  I  come  to  see  your  mamma." 

"  You  don't,"  said  Rose. 

"  Sure  I  hoped  you'd  introduce  me  ! "  cried  Mrs. 
Donovan,  compromising  herself  in  her  embarrass 
ment. 

"  It's  not  necessary  ;  you  knew  her  once." 

"  Indeed  and  I've  known  every  one  once,"  the 
visitor  confessed. 


22O  THE    CHAPERON. 

Mrs.  Tramore,  when  she  came  in,  was  charming 
and  exactly  right  ;  she  greeted  Mrs.  Donovan  as  if 
she  had  met  her  the  week  before  last,  giving  her 
daughter  such  a  new  illustration  of  her  tact  that 
Rose  again  had  the  idea  that  it  was  no  wonder 
" people"  had  liked  her.  The  girl  grudged  Mrs. 
Donovan  so  fresh  a  morsel  as  a  description  of  her 
mother  at  home,  rejoicing  that  she  would  be  incon 
venienced  by  having  to  keep  the  story  out  of  Hill 
Street.  Her  mother  went  away  before  Mrs.  Dono 
van  departed,  and  Rose  was  touched  by  guessing  her 
reason — the  thought  that  since  even  this  circuitous 
personage  had  been  moved  to  come,  the  two  might,  if 
left  together,  invent  some  remedy.  Rose  waited  to 
see  what  Mrs.  Donovan  had  in  fact  invented. 

"You  won't  come  out  with  me  then  ?" 

"  Come  out  with  you  ?  " 

"  My  daughters  are  married.  You  know  I'm  a  lone 
woman.  It  would  be  an  immense  pleasure  to  me  to 
have  so  charming  a  creature  as  yourself  to  present  to 
the  world." 

"I  go  out  with  my  mother,"  said  Rose,  after  a 
moment. 

"Yes,  but  sometimes  when  she's  not  inclined?  " 

"  She  goes  everywhere  she  wants  to  go,"  Rose 
continued,  uttering  the  biggest  fib  of  her  life  and  only 
regretting  it  should  be  wasted  on  Mrs.  Donovan. 

"  Ah,  but  do  you  go  everywhere  you  want  ? "  the 
lady  asked  sociably. 

"  One  goes  even  to  places  one  hates.  Every  one 
does  that." 


THE    CHAPERON.  221 

"  Oh,  what  /go  through  !  "  this  social  martyr  cried. 
Then  she  laid  a  persuasive  hand  on  the  girl's  arm. 
"  Let  me  show  you  at  a  few  places  first,  and  then 
we'll  see  I'll  bring  them  all  here." 

"  I  don't  think  I  understand  you,"  replied  Rose, 
though  in  Mrs.  Donovan's  words  she  perfectly  saw 
her  own  theory  of  the  case  reflected.  For  a  quarter 
of  a  minute  she  asked  herself  whether  she  might  not, 
after  all,  do  so  much  evil  that  good  might  come. 
Mrs.  Donovan  would  take  her  out  the  next  day,  and 
be  thankful  enough  to  annex  such  an  attraction  as  a 
pretty  girl.  Various  consequences  would  ensue  and 
the  long  delay  would  be  shortened  ;  her  mother's 
drawing-room  would  resound  with  the  clatter  of 
teacups. 

"  Mrs.  Bray's  having  some  big  thing  next  week ; 
come  with  me  there  and  I'll  show  you  what  I  man<i," 
Mrs.  Donovan  pleaded. 

Qj.         . 

"  I  see  what  you  rnan^,"  Rose  answered,  brushing 
away  her  temptation  and  getting  up.  "  I'm  much 
obliged  to  you." 

"  You  know  you're  wrong,  my  dear,"  said  her  inter 
locutress,  with  angry  little  eyes. 

"  I'm  not  going  to  Mrs.  Bray's." 

"  I'll  get  you  a  kyarcj ;  it'll  only  cost  me  a  penny 
stamp." 

"  I've  got  one,"  said  the  girl,  smiling. 

"Do  you  mean  a  penny  stamp?  "  Mrs.  Donovan, 
especially  at  departure,  always  observed  all  the  forms 
of  amity.  "  You  can't  do  it  alone,  my  darling,"  she 
declared. 


222  THE    CHAPERON. 

"  Shall  they  call  you  a  cab  ?  "  Rose  asked. 

"  I'll  pick  one  up.  I  choose  my  horse.  You  know 
you  require  your  start,"  her  visitor  went  on. 

"  Excuse  my  mother/'  was  Rose's  only  reply. 

"Don't  mention  it.  Come  to  me  when  you  need 
me.  You'll  find  me  in  the  Red  Book." 

"  It's  awfully  kind  of  you." 

Mrs.  Donovan  lingered  a  moment  on  the  threshold. 
"  Who  will  you  have  now,  my  child  ?  "  she  appealed. 

"I  won't  have  any  one  !  "  Rose  turned  away,  blush 
ing  for  her.  "  She  came  on  speculation,"  she  said 
afterwards  to  Mrs.  Tramore. 

Her  mother  looked  at  her  a  moment  in  silence. 
"  You  can  do  it  if  you  like,  you  know." 

Rose  made  no  direct  answer  to  this  observation ; 
she  remarked  instead  :  "  See  what  our  quiet  life  allows 
us  to  escape." 

"  We  don't  escape  it.     She  has  been  here  an  hour." 

"Once  in  twenty  years!  We  might  meet  her 
three  times  a  day." 

"Oh,  I'd  take  her  with  the  rest!"  sighed  Mrs. 
Tramore ;  while  her  daughter  recognised  that  what 
her  companion  wanted  to  do  was  just  what  Mrs. 
Donovan  was  doing.  Mrs.  Donovan's  life  was  her 
ideal. 

On  a  Sunday,  ten  days  later,  Rose  went  to  see  one 
of  her  old  governesses,  of  whom  she  had  lost  sight 
for  some  time  and  who  had  written  to  her  that  she 
was  in  London,  unoccupied  and  ill.  This  was  just  the 
sort  of  relation  into  which  she  could  throw  herself 


THE    CHAPERON.  223 

now  with  inordinate  zeal ;  the  idea  of  it,  however,  not 
preventing  a  foretaste  of  the  queer  expression  in  the 
excellent  lady's  face  when  she  should  mention  with 
whom  she  was  living.  While  she  smiled  at  this  pict 
ure  she  threw  in  another  joke,  asking  herself  if  Miss 
Hack  could  be  held  in  any  degree  to  constitute  the 
nucleus  of  a  circle.  She  would  come  to  see  her,  in 
any  event  —  come  the  more  the  further  she  was 
dragged  down.  Sunday  was  always  a  difficult  day 
with  the  two  ladies  —  the  afternoons  made  it  so 
apparent  that  they  were  not  frequented.  Her 
mother,  it  is  true,  was  comprised  in  the  habits  of 
two  or  three  old  gentlemen  —  she  had  for  a  long 
time  avoided  male  friends  of  less  than  seventy  — 
who  disliked  each  other  enough  to  make  the  room, 
when  they  were  there  at  once,  crack  with  pressure. 
Rose  sat  for  a  long  time  with  Miss  Hack,  doing  con 
scientious  justice  to  the  conception  that  there  could 
be  troubles  in  the  world  worse  than  her  own  ;  and 
when  she  came  back  her  mother  was  alone,  but  with 
a  story  to  tell  of  a  long  visit  from  Mr.  Guy  Mangier, 
who  had  waited  and  waited  for  her  return.  "  He's 
in  love  with  you ;  he's  coming  again  on  Tuesday," 
Mrs.  Tramore  announced. 
"  Did  he  say  so  ?  " 

"That  he's  coming  back  on  Tuesday?" 
"No,  that  he's  in  love  with  me." 
"  He  didn't  need,  when  he  stayed  two  hours." 
"With  you  ?     It's  you  he's  in  love  with,  mamma  ! " 
"That   will   do   as  well,"   laughed    Mrs.   Tramore. 


224  THE    CHAPERON. 

"  For  all  the  use  we  shall  make  of  him  !  "  she  added 
in  a  moment. 

"We  shall  make  great  use  of  him.  His  mother 
sent  him." 

"Oh,  she'll  never  come  !  " 

"Then  he  sha'n't,"  said  Rose.  Yet  he  was  ad 
mitted  on  the  Tuesday,  and  after  she  had  given  him 
his  tea  Mrs.  Tramore  left  the  young  people  alone. 
Rose  wished  she  hadn't  —  she  herself  had  another 
view.  At  any  rate  she  disliked  her  mother's  view, 
which  she  had  easily  guessed.  Mr.  Mangier  did 
nothing  but  say  how  charming  he  thought  his  hostess 
of  the  Sunday,  and  what  a  tremendously  jolly  visit 
he  had  had.  He  didn't  remark  in  so  many  words  "  I 
had  no  idea  your  mother  was  such  a  good  sort "  ;  but 
this  was  the  spirit  of  his  simple  discourse.  Rose 
liked  it  at  first  —  a  little  of  it  gratified  her ;  then  she 
thought  there  was  too  much  of  it  for  good  taste.  She 
had  to  reflect  that  one  does  what  one  can  and  that 
Mr.  Mangier  probably  thought  he  was  delicate.  He 
wished  to  convey  that  he  desired  to  make  up  to 
her  for  the  injustice  of  society.  Why  shouldn't  her 
mother  receive  gracefully,  she  asked  (not  audibly) 
and  who  had  ever  said  she  didn't  ?  Mr.  Mangier 
had  a  great  deal  to  say  about  the  disappointment  of 
his  own  parent  over  Miss  Tramore' s  not  having  come 
to  dine  with  them  the  night  of  his  aunt's^ball. 

"  Lady  Maresfield  knows  why  I  didn't  come,"  Rose 
answered  at  last. 

"  Ah,  now,  but  /  don't,  you  know ;  can't  you  tell 
me?"  asked  the  young  man. 


THE    CHAPERON.  225 

"  It  doesn't  matter,  if  your  mother's  clear  about  it." 
"  Oh,  but  why  make  such  an  awful  mystery  of  it, 
when  I'm  dying  to  know  ?  " 

He  talked  about  this,  he  chaffed  her  about  it  for 
the  rest  of  his  visit :  he  had  at  last  found  a  topic  after 
his  own  heart.  If  her  mother  considered  that  he 
might  be  the  emblem  of  their  redemption  he  was 
an  engine  of  the  most  primitive  construction.  He 
stayed  and  stayed  ;  he  struck  Rose  as  on  the  point 
of  bringing  out  something  for  which  he  had  not 
quite,  as  he  would  have  said,  the  cheek.  Sometimes 
she  thought  he  was  going  to  begin:  "By  the  way, 
my  mother  told  me  to  propose  to  you."  At  other 
moments  he  seemed  charged  with  the  admission  :  "  I 
say,  of  course  I  really  know  what  you're  trying  to  do 
for  her,"  nodding  at  the  door:  "therefore  hadn't  we 
better  speak  of  it  frankly,  so  that  I  can  help  you  with 
my  mother,  and  more  particularly  with  my  sister 
Gwendolen,  who's  the  difficult  one  ?  The  fact  is,  you 
see,  they  won't  do  anything  for  nothing.  If  you'll 
accept  me  they'll  call,  but  they  won't  call  without 
something  'down.'  '  Mr.  Mangier  departed  without 
their  speaking  frankly,  and  Rose  Tramore  had  a  hot 
hour  during  which  she  almost  entertained,  vindic 
tively,  the  project  of  "accepting"  the  limpid  youth 
until  after  she  should  have  got  her  mother  into  circu 
lation.  The  cream  of  the  vision  was  that  she  mi^ht 

O 

break  with  him  later.  She  could  read  that  this  was 
what  her  mother  would  have  liked,  but  the  next  time 
he  came  the  door  was  closed  to  him,  and  the  next 
and  the  next. 


226  THE    CHAPERON. 

In  August  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  go 
abroad,  with  the  sense  on  Rose's  part  that  the  battle 
was  still  all  to  fight ;  for  a  round  of  country  visits 
was  not  in  prospect,  and  English  watering-places 
constituted  one  of  the  few  subjects  on  which  the  girl 
had  heard  her  mother  express  herself  with  disgust. 
Continental  autumns  had  been  indeed  for  years,  one 
of  the  various  forms  of  Mrs.  Tramore's  atonement, 
but  Rose  could  only  infer  that  such  fruit  as  they  had 
borne  was  bitter.  The  stony  stare  of  Belgravia  could 
be  practised  at  Homburg ;  and  somehow  it  was  in- 
veterately  only  gentlemen  who  sat  next  to  her  at  the 
table  d'hote  at  Cadenabbia.  Gentlemen  had  never 
been  of  any  use  to  Mrs.  Tramore  for  getting  back 
into  society  ;  they  had  only  helped  her  effectually  to 
get  out  of  it.  She  once  dropped,  to  her  daughter,  in 
a  moralising  mood,  the  remark  that  it  was  astonishing 
how  many  of  them  one  could  know  without  its  doing 
one  any  good.  Fifty  of  them  —  even  very  clever  ones 
—  represented  a  value  inferior  to  that  of  one  stupid 
woman.  Rose  wondered  at  the  offhand  way  in  which 
her  mother  could  talk  of  fifty  clever  men  ;  it  seemed 
to  her  that  the  whole  world  couldn't  contain  such  a 
number.  She  had  a  sombre  sense  that  mankind 
must  be  dull  and  mean.  These  cogitations  took 
place  in  a  cold  hotel,  in  an  eternal  Swiss  rain,  and 
they  had  a  flat  echo  in  the  transalpine  valleys,  as  the 
lonely  ladies  went  vaguely  down  to  the  Italian  lakes 
and  cities.  Rose  guided  their  course,  at  moments, 
with  a  kind  of  aimless  ferocity  ;  she  moved  abruptly, 


THE    CHAPERON.  22/ 

feeling  vulgar  and  hating  their  life,  though  destitute 
of  any  definite  vision  of  another  life  that  would  have 
been  open  to  her.  She  had  set  herself  a  task  and 
she  clung  to  it  ;  but  she  appeared  to  herself  despic 
ably  idle.  She  had  succeeded  in  not  going  to  Hom- 
burg  waters,  where  London  was  trying  to  wash  away 
some  of  its  stains  ;  that  would  be  too  staring  an  ad 
vertisement  of  their  situation.  The  main  difference 
in  situations  to  her  now  was  the  difference  of  being 
more  or  less  pitied,  at  the  best  an  intolerable  danger; 
so  that  the  places  she  preferred  were  the  unsuspi 
cious  ones.  She  wanted  to  triumph  with  contempt, 
not  with  submission. 

One  morning  in  September,  coming  with  her 
mother  out  of  the  marble  church  at  Milan,  she  per 
ceived  that  a  gentleman  who  had  just  passed  her  on 
his  way  into  the  cathedral  and  whose  face  she  had 
not  noticed,  had  quickly  raised  his  hat,  with  a  sup 
pressed  ejaculation.  She  involuntarily  glanced  back  ; 
the  gentleman  had  paused,  again  uncovering,  and 
Captain  Jay  stood  saluting  her  in  the  Italian  sun 
shine.  "  Oh,  good-morning  !"  she  said,  and  walked 
on,  pursuing  her  course ;  her  mother  was  a  little  in 
front.  She  overtook  her  in  a  moment;  with  an  un 
reasonable  sense,  like  a  gust  of  cold  air,  that  men 
were  worse  than  ever,  for  Captain  Jay  had  apparently 
moved  into  the  church.  Her  mother  turned  as  they 
met,  and  suddenly,  as  she  looked  back,  an  expression 
of  peculiar  sweetness  came  into  this  lady's  eyes.  It 
made  Rose's  take  the  same  direction  and  rest  a 


228  THE    CHAPERON. 

second  time  on  Captain  Jay,  who  was  planted  just 
where  he  had  stood  a  minute  before.  He  immedi 
ately  came  forward,  asking  Rose  with  great  gravity 
if  he  might  speak  to  her  a  moment,  while  Mrs. 
Tramore  went  her  way  again.  He  had  the  expression 
of  a  man  who  wished  to  say  something  very  impor 
tant  ;  yet  his  next  words  were  simple  enough  and 
consisted  of  the  remark  that  he  had  not  seen  her  for 
a  year. 

"  Is  it  really  so  much  as  that  ? "  asked  Rose. 

"Very  nearly.  I  would  have  looked  you  up,  but 
in  the  first  place  I  have  been  very  little  in  London, 
and  in  the  second  I  believed  it  wouldn't  have  done 
any  good." 

"You  should  have  put  that  first,"  said  the  girl. 
"  It  wouldn't  have  done  any  good." 

He  was  silent  over  this  a  moment,  in  his  customary 
deciphering  way  ;  but  the  view  he  took  of  it  did  not 
prevent  him  from  inquiring,  as  she  slowly  followed 
her  mother,  if  he  mightn't  walk  with  her  now.  She 
answered  with  a  laugh  that  it  wouldn't  do  any  good 
but  that  he  might  do  as  he  liked.  He  replied  with 
out  the  slightest  manifestation  of  levity  that  it  would 
do  more  good  than  if  he  didn't,  and  they  strolled 
together,  with  Mrs.  Tramore  well  before  them,  across 
the  big,  amusing  piazza,  where  the  front  of  the  cathe 
dral  makes  a  sort  of  buildecl  light.  He  asked  a  ques 
tion  or  two  and  he  explained  his  own  presence  :  having 
a  month's  holiday,  the  first  clear  time  for  several  years, 
he  had  just  popped  over  the  Alps.  He  inquired  if 


THE    CHAPERON.  229 

Rose  had  recent  news  of  the  old  lady  in  Hill  Street, 
and  it  was  the  only  tortuous  thing  she  had  ever  heard 
him  say. 

"  I  have  had  no  communication  of  any  kind  from 
her  since  I  parted  with  you  under  her  roof.  Hasn't 
she  mentioned  that  ?  "  said  Rose. 

"  I  haven't  seen  her." 

"I  thought  you  were  such  great  friends." 

Bertram  Jay  hesitated  a  moment.  "  Well,  not  so 
much  now." 

"  What  has  she  done  to  you  ?  "  Rose  demanded. 

He  fidgeted  a  little,  as  if  he  were  thinking  of  some 
thing  that  made  him  unconscious  of  her  question  ; 
then,  with  mild  violence,  he  brought  out  the  inquiry  : 
"  Miss  Tramore,  are  you  happy  ? " 

She  was  startled  by  the  words,  for  she  on  her  side 
had  been  reflecting  —  reflecting  that  he  had  broken 
with  her  grandmother  and  that  this  pointed  to  a 
reason.  It  suggested  at  least  that  he  wouldn't  now 
be  so  much  like  a  mouthpiece  for  that  cold  ancestral 
tone.  She  turned  off  his  question  —  said  it  never 
was  a  fair  one,  as  you  gave  yourself  away  however 
you  answered  it.  When  he  repeated  "  You  give 
yourself  away?"  as  if  he  didn't  understand,  she 
remembered  that  he  had  not  read  the  funny  Ameri 
can  books.  This  brought  them  to  a  silence,  for  she 
had  enlightened  him  only  by  another  laugh,  and  he 
was  evidently  preparing  another  question,  which  he 
wished  carefully  to  disconnect  from  the  former. 
Presently,  just  as  they  were  coming  near  Mrs. 


23O  THE    CHAPERON. 

Tramore,  it  arrived  in  the  words  "  Is  this  lady  your 
mother  ?  "  On  Rose's  assenting,  with  the  addition 
that  she  was  travelling  with  her,  he  said  :  "  Will  you 
be  so  kind  as  to  introduce  me  to  her?"  They  were 
so  close  to  Mrs.  Tramore  that  she  probably  heard, 
but  she  floated  away  with  a  single  stroke  of  her 
paddle  and  an  inattentive  poise  of  her  head.  It 
was  a  striking  exhibition  of  the  famous  tact,  for  Rose 
delayed  to  answer,  which  was  exactly  what  might 
have  made  her  mother  wish  to  turn  ;  and  indeed  when 
at  last  the  girl  spoke  she  only  said  to  her  companion  : 
"  Why  do  you  ask  me  that  ?  " 

"  Because  I  desire  the  pleasure  of  making  her 
acquaintance." 

Rose  had  stopped,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  square 
they  stood  looking  at  each  other.  "  Do  you  remem 
ber  what  you  said  to  me  the  last  time  I  saw  you  ?  " 

"Oh,  don't  speak  of  that!" 

"  It's  better  to  speak  of  it  now  than  to  speak  of  it 
later." 

Bertram  Jay  looked  round  him,  as  if  to  see  whether 
any  one  would  hear ;  but  the  bright  foreignness  gave 
him  a  sense  of  safety,  and  he  unexpectedly  exclaimed  : 
"  Miss  Tramore,  I  love  you  more  than  ever !  " 

"Then  you  ought  to  have  come  to  see  us,"  de 
clared  the  girl,  quickly  walking  on. 

"  You  treated  me  the  last  time  as  if  I  were  posi 
tively  offensive  to  you." 

"So  I  did,  but  you  know  my  reason." 

"  Because  I  protested  against  the  course  you  were 


THE    CHAPERON,  231 

taking?  I  did,  I  did  !  "  the  young  man  rang  out,  as 
if  he  still,  a  little,  stuck  to  that. 

His  tone  made  Rose  say  gaily :  "  Perhaps  you  do 
so  yet?" 

"  I  can't  tell  till  I've  seen  more  of  your  circum 
stances,"  he  replied  with  eminent  honesty. 

The  girl  stared ;  her  light  laugh  filled  the  air. 
"And  it's  in  order  to  see  more  of  them  and  judge 
that  you  wish  to  make  my  mother's  acquaintance  ? " 

He  coloured  at  this  and  he  evaded ;  then  he  broke 
out  with  a  confused  "  Miss  Tramore,  let  me  stay  with 
you  a  little  !  "  which  made  her  stop  again. 

"  Your  company  will  do  us  great  honour,  but  there 
must  be  a  rigid  condition  attached  to  our  acceptance 
of  it." 

"  Kindly  mention  it,"  said  Captain  Jay,  staring  at 
the  facade  of  the  cathedral. 

"  You  don't  take  us  on  trial." 

"  On  trial  ?  " 

"  You  don't  make  an  observation  to  me  —  not  a 
single  one,  ever,  ever!  —  on  the  matter  that,  in  Hill 
Street,  we  had  our  last  words  about." 

Captain  Jay  appeared  to  be  counting  the  thousand 
pinnacles  of  the  church.  "  I  think  you  really  must  be 
right,"  he  remarked  at  last. 

"  There  you  are  !  "  cried  Rose  Tramore,  and  walked 
rapidly  away. 

He  caught  up  with  her,  he  laid  his  hand  upon  her 
arm  to  stay  her.  "  If  you're  going  to  Venice,  let  me 
go  to  Venice  with  you  !  " 


232  THE    CHAPERON. 

"  You  don't  even  understand  my  condition." 

"  I'm  sure  you're  right,  then  :  you  must  be  right 
about  everything." 

"That's  not  in  the  least  true,  and  I  don't  care  a  fig 
whether  you're  sure  or  not.  Please  let  me  go." 

He  had  barred  her  way,  he  kept  her  longer.  "  I'll 
go  and  speak  to  your  mother  myself  !  " 

Even  in  the  midst  of  another  emotion  she  was 
amused  at  the  air  of  audacity  accompanying  this 
declaration.  Poor  Captain  Jay  might  have  been  on 
the  point  of  marching  up  to  a  battery.  She  looked 
at  him  a  moment ;  then  she  said  :  "  You'll  be  disap 
pointed  ! " 

"  Disappointed  ? " 

"She's  much  more  proper  than  grandmamma, 
because  she's  much  more  amiable." 

"Dear  Miss  Tramore  —  dear  Miss  Tramore  !  "  the 
young  man  murmured  helplessly. 

"  You'll  see  for  yourself.  Only  there's  another 
condition,"  Rose  went  on. 

"Another?"  he  cried,  with  discouragement  and 
alarm. 

"  You  must  understand  thoroughly,  before  you 
throw  in  your  lot  with  us  even  for  a  few  days,  what 
our  position  really  is." 

"  Is  it  very  bad  ?  "  asked  Bertram  Jay  artlessly. 

"  No  one  has  anything  to  do  with  us,  no  one  speaks 
to  us,  no  one  looks  at  us." 

"  Really  ?  "  stared  the  young  man. 

"We've  no  social  existence,  we're  utterly  despised." 


THE    CHAPERON.  233 

"  Oh,  Miss  Tramore  ! "  Captain  Jay  interposed. 
He  added  quickly,  vaguely,  and  with  a  want  of  pres 
ence  of  mind  of  which  he  as  quickly  felt  ashamed  : 
"Do  none  of  your  family  —  ?"  The  question  col 
lapsed  ;  the  brilliant  girl  was  looking  at  him. 

"  We're  extraordinarily  happy,"  she  threw  out. 

"  Now  that's  all  I  wanted  to  know  !  "  he  exclaimed, 
with  a  kind  of  exaggerated  cheery  reproach,  walking 
on  with  her  briskly  to  overtake  her  mother. 

He  was  not  dining  at  their  inn,  but  he  insisted  on 
coming  that  evening  to  their  table  d'hote.  He  sat 
next  Mrs.  Tramore,  and  in  the  evening  he  accompa 
nied  them  gallantly  to  the  opera,  at  a  third-rate  theatre 
where  they  were  almost  the  only  ladies  in  the  boxes. 
The  next  day  they  went  together  by  rail  to  the  Char 
terhouse  of  Pavia,  and  while  he  strolled  with  the 
girl,  as  they  waited  for  the  homeward  train,  he  said 
to  her  candidly  :  "  Your  mother's  remarkably  pretty." 
She  remembered  the  words  and  the  feeling  they  gave 
her:  they  were  the  first  note  of  new  era.  The 
feeling  was  somewhat  that  of  an  anxious,  gratified 
matron  who  has  "  presented  "  her  child  and  is  think 
ing  of  the  matrimonial  market.  Men  might  be  of 
no  use,  as  Mrs.  Tramore  said,  yet  it  was  from  this 
moment  Rose  dated  the  rosy  dawn  of  her  confidence 
that  her  protegee  would  go  off ;  and  when  later,  in 
crowded  assemblies,  the  phrase,  or  something  like  it 
behind  a  hat  or  a  fan,  fell  repeatedly  on  her  anxious 
ear,  "  Your  mother  is  in  beauty ! "  or  "  I've  never 
seen  her  look  better !  "  she  had  a  faint  vision  of  the 


234  THE    CHAPERON. 

yellow  sunshine  and  the  afternoon  shadows  on  the 
dusty  Italian  platform. 

Mrs.  Tramore's  behaviour  at  this  period  was  a  reve 
lation  of  her  native  understanding  of  delicate  situa 
tions.  She  needed  no  account  of  this  one  from  her 
daughter  —  it  was  one  of  the  things  for  which  she 
had  a  scent ;  and  there  was  a  kind  of  loyalty  to  the 
rules  of  a  game  in  the  silent  sweetness  with  which 
she  smoothed  the  path  of  Bertram  Jay.  It  was  clear 
that  she  was  in  her  element  in  fostering  the  exercise 
of  the  affections,  and  if  she  ever  spoke  without 
thinking  twice  it  is  probable  that  she  would  have 
exclaimed,  with  some  gaiety,  "  Oh,  I  know  all  about 
love!"  Rose  could  see  that  she  thought  their 
companion  would  be  a  help,  in  spite  of  his  being 
no  dispenser  of  patronage.  The  key  to  the  gates  of 
fashion  had  not  been  placed  in  his  hand,  and  no  one 
had  ever  heard  of  the  ladies  of  his  family,  who  lived 
in  some  vague  hollow  of  the  Yorkshire  moors ;  but 
none  the  less  he  might  administer  a  muscular  push. 
Yes  indeed,  men  in  general  were  broken  reeds,  but 
Captain  Jay  was  peculiarly  representative.  Respect 
ability  was  the  woman's  maximum,  as  honour  was  the 
man's,  but  this  distinguished  young  soldier  inspired 
more  than  one  kind  of  confidence.  Rose  had  a  great 
deal  of  attention  for  the  use  to  which  his  respecta 
bility  was  put ;  and  there  mingled  with  this  attention 
some  amusement  and  much  compassion.  She  saw 
that  after  a  couple  of  days  he  decidedly  liked  her 
mother,  and  that  he  was  yet  not  in  the  least  aware  of 


THE    CHAPERON.  235 

it.  He  took  for  granted  that  he  believed  in  her 
but  little ;  notwithstanding  which  he  would  have 
trusted  her  with  anything  except  Rose  herself.  His 
trusting  her  with  Rose  would  come  very  soon.  He 
never  spoke  to  her  daughter  about  her  qualities  of 
character,  but  two  or  three  of  them  (and  indeed  these 
were  all  the  poor  lady  had,  and  they  made  the  best 
show)  were  what  he  had  in  mind  in  praising  her 
appearance.  When  he  remarked  :  "  What  attention 
Mrs.  Tramore  seems  to  attract  everywhere ! "  he 
meant :  "  What  a  beautifully  simple  nature  it  is  !  "  and 
when  he  said  :  "  There's  something  extraordinarily 
harmonious  in  the  colours  she  wears,"  it  signified : 
"  Upon  my  word,  I  never  saw  such  a  sweet  temper 
in  my  life !  "  She  lost  one  of  her  boxes  at  Verona, 
and  made  the  prettiest  joke  of  it  to  Captain  Jay. 
When  Rose  saw  this  she  said  to  herself,  "  Next 
season  we  shall  have  only  to  choose."  Rose  knew 
what  was  in  the  box. 

By  the  time  they  reached  Venice  (they  had  stopped 
at  half  a  dozen  little  old  romantic  cities  in  the  most 
frolicsome  aesthetic  way)  she  liked  their  companion 
better  than  she  had  ever  liked  him  before.  She  did 
him  the  justice  to  recognise  that  if  he  was  not  quite 
honest  with  himself  he  was  at  least  wholly  honest 
with  her.  She  reckoned  up  everything  he  had  been 
since  he  joined  them,  and  put  upon  it  all  an  interpre 
tation  so  favourable  to  his  devotion  that,  catching 
herself  in  the  act  of  glossing  over  one  or  two  episodes 
that  had  not  struck  her  at  the  time  as  disinterested 


236  THE    CHAPERON. 

she  exclaimed,  beneath  her  breath,  "  Look  out  — 
you're  falling  in  love  ! "  But  if  he  liked  correctness 
wasn't  he  quite  right  ?  Could  any  one  possibly  like 
it  more  than  she  did?  And  if  he  had  protested 
against  her  throwing  in  her  lot  with  her  mother,  this 
was  not  because  of  the  benefit  conferred  but  because 
of  the  injury  received.  He  exaggerated  that  injury, 
but  this  was  the  privilege  of  a  lover  perfectly  willing 
to  be  selfish  on  behalf  of  his  mistress.  He  might 
have  wanted  her  grandmother's  money  for  her,  but  if 
he  had  given  her  up  on  first  discovering  that  she  was 
throwing  away  her  chance  of  it  (oh,  this  was  her 
doing  too!)  he  had  given  up  her  grandmother  as 
much  :  not  keeping  well  with  the  old  woman,  as  some 
men  would  have  done ;  not  waiting  to  see  how  the 
perverse  experiment  would  turn  out  and  appeasing 
her,  if  it  should  promise  tolerably,  with  a  view  to 
future  operations.  He  had  had  a  simple-minded, 
evangelical,  lurid  view  of  what  the  girl  he  loved 
would  find  herself  in  for.  She  could  see  this  now  — 
she  could  see  it  from  his  present  bewilderment  and 
mystification,  and  she  liked  him  and  pitied  him,  with 
the  kindest  smile,  for  the  original  nawett  as  well 
as  for  the  actual  meekness.  No  wonder  he  hadn't 
known  what  she  was  in  for,  since  he  now  didn't  even 
know  what  he  was  in  for  himself.  Were  there  not 
moments  when  he  thought  his  companions  almost 
unnaturally  good,  almost  suspiciously  safe  ?  He  had 
lost  all  power  to  verify  that  sketch  of  their  isolation 
and  declassement  to  which  she  had  treated  him  on 


THE    CHAPERON.  237 

the  great  square  at  Milan.  The  last  thing  he  noticed 
was  that  they  were  neglected,  and  he  had  never,  for 
himself,  had  such  an  impression  of^society. 

It  could  scarcely  be  enhanced  even  by  the  appari 
tion  of  a  large,  fair,  hot,  red-haired  young  man,  carry 
ing  a  lady's  fan  in  his  hand,  who  suddenly  stood 
before  their  little  party  as,  on  the  third  evening  after 
their  arrival  in  Venice,  it  partook  of  ices  at  one  of 
the  tables  before  the  celebrated  Cafe  Florian.  The 
lamplit  Venetian  dusk  appeared  to  have  revealed 
them  to  this  gentleman  as  he  sat  with  other  friends 
at  a  neighbouring  table,  and  he  had  sprung  up,  with 
unsophisticated  glee,  to  shake  hands  with  Mrs.  Tra- 
more  and  her  daughter.  Rose  recalled  him  to  her 
mother,  who  looked  at  first  as  though  she  didn't 
remember  him  but  presently  bestowed  a  sufficiently 
gracious  smile  on  Mr.  Guy  Mangier.  He  gave  with 
youthful  candour  the  history  of  his  movements  and 
indicated  the  whereabouts  of  his  family :  he  was 
with  his  mother  and  sisters ;  they  had  met  the  Bob 
Veseys,  who  had  taken  Lord  Whiteroy's  yacht  and 
were  going  to  Constantinople.  His  mother  and  the 
girls,  poor  things,  were  at  the  Grand  Hotel,  but  he 
was  on  the  yacht  with  the  Veseys,  where  they  had 
Lord  Whiteroy's  cook.  Wasn't  the  food  in  Venice 
filthy,  and  wouldn't  they  come  and  look  at  the  yacht  ? 
She  wasn't  very  fast,  but  she  was  awfully  jolly.  His 
mother  might  have  come  if  she  would,  but  she 
wouldn't  at  first,  and  now,  when  she  wanted  to,  there 
were  other  people,  who  naturally  wouldn't  turn  out 


238  THE    CHAPERON. 

for  her.  Mr.  Mangier  sat  down  ;  he  alluded  with 
artless  resentment  to  the  way,  in  July,  the  door  of 
his  friends  had  been  closed  to  him.  He  was  going 
to  Constantinople,  but  he  didn't  care  —  if  they  were 
going  anywhere ;  meanwhile  his  mother  hoped  aw 
fully  they  would  look  her  up. 

Lady  Maresfield,  if  she  had  given  her  son  any 
such  message,  which  Rose  disbelieved,  entertained 
her  hope  in  a  manner  compatible  with  her  sitting  for 
half  an  hour,  surrounded  by  her  little  retinue,  with 
out  glancing  in  the  direction  of  Mrs.  Tramore.  The 
girl,  however,  was  aware  that  this  was  not  a  good 
enough  instance  of  their  humiliation  ;  inasmuch  as 
it  was  rather  she  who,  on  the  occasion  of  their  last 
contact,  had  held  off  from  Lady  Maresfield.  She 
was  a  little  ashamed  now  of  not  having  answered  the 
note  in  which  this  affable  personage  ignored  her 
mother.  She  couldn't  help  perceiving  indeed  a  dim 
movement  on  the  part  of  some  of  the  other  members 
of  the  group  ;  she  made  out  an  attitude  of  observa 
tion  in  the  high-plumed  head  of  Mrs.  Vaughan- 
Vesey.  Mrs.  Vesey,  perhaps,  might  have  been 
looking  at  Captain  Jay,  for  as  this  gentleman  walked 
back  to  the  hotel  with  our  young  lady  (they  were  at 
the  "  Britannia,"  and  young  Mangier,  who  clung  to 
them,  went  in  front  with  Mrs.  Tramore)  he  revealed 
to  Rose  that  he  had  some  acquaintance  with  Lady 
Maresneld's  eldest  daughter,  though  he  didn't  know 
and  didn't  particularly  want  to  know,  her  ladyship. 
He  expressed  himself  with  more  acerbity  than  she 


THE    CHAPERON.  239 

had  ever  heard  him  use  (Christian  charity  so  gener 
ally  governed  his  speech)  about  the  young  donkey 
who  had  been  prattling  to  them.  They  separated  at 
the  door  of  the  hotel.  Mrs.  Tramore  had  got  rid  of 
Mr.  Mangier,  and  Bertram  Jay  was  in  other  quarters. 

"  If  you  know  Mrs.  Vesey,  why  didn't  you  go  and 
speak  to  her  ?  I'm  sure  she  saw  you,"  Rose  said. 

Captain  Jay  replied  even  more  circumspectly  than 
usual.  "  Because  I  didn't  want  to  leave  you." 

"  Well,  you  can  go  now ;  you're  free,"  Rose 
rejoined. 

"Thank  you.     I  shall  never  go  again." 

"That  won't  be  civil,"  said  Rose. 

"  I  don't  care  to  be  civil.     I  don't  like  her." 

"  Why  don't  you  like  her  ? " 

"You  ask  too  many  questions." 

"  I  know  I  do,"  the  girl  acknowledged. 

Captain  Jay  had  already  shaken  hands  with  her, 
but  at  this  he  put  out  his  hand  again.  "  She's  too 
worldly,"  he  murmured,  while  he  held  Rose  Tra- 
more's  a  moment. 

"Ah,  you  dear!"  Rose  exclaimed  almost  audibly 
as,  with  her  mother,  she  turned  away. 

The  next  morning,  upon  the  Grand  Canal,  the 
gondola  of  our  three  friends  encountered  a  stately 
barge  which,  though  it  contained  several  persons, 
seemed  pervaded  mainly  by  one  majestic  presence. 
During  the  instant  the  gondolas  were  passing  each 
other  it  was  impossible  either  for  Rose  Tramore  or 
for  her  companions  not  to  become  conscious  that  this 


24O  THE    CHAPERON. 

distinguished  identity  had  markedly  inclined  itself  — 
a  circumstance  commemorated  the  next  moment, 
almost  within  earshot  of  the  other  boat,  by  the  most 
spontaneous  cry  that  had  issued  for  many  a  day  from 
the  lips  of  Mrs.  Tramore.  "  Fancy,  my  dear,  Lady 
Maresfield  has  bowed  to  us  !  " 

"We  ought  to  have  returned  it,"  Rose  answered; 
but  she  looked  at  Bertram  Jay,  who  was  opposite  to 
her.  He  blushed,  and  she  blushed,  and  during  this 
moment  was  born  a  deeper  understanding  than  had 
yet  existed  between  these  associated  spirits.  It  had 
something  to  do  with  their  going  together  that  after 
noon,  without  her  mother,  to  look  at  certain  out-of- 
the-way  pictures  as  to  which  Ruskin  had  inspired 
her  with  a  desire  to  see  sincerely.  Mrs.  Tramore 
expressed  the  wish  to  stay  at  home,  and  the  motive  of 
this  wish  —  a  finer  shade  than  any  that  even  Ruskin 
had  ever  found  a  phrase  for  —  was  not  translated  into 
misrepresenting  words  by  either  the  mother  or  the 
daughter.  At  San  Giovanni  in  Bragora  the  girl  and 
her  companion  came  upon  Mrs.  Vaughan-Vesey,  who, 
with  one  of  her  sisters,  was  also  endeavouring  to  do 
the  earnest  thing.  She  did  it  to  Rose,  she  did  it  to 
Captain  Jay,  as  well  as  to  Gianbellini ;  she  was  a 
handsome,  long-necked,  aquiline  person,  of  a  differ 
ent  type  from  the  rest  of  her  family,  and  she  did  it 
remarkably  well.  She  secured  our  friends  —  it  was 
her  own  expression — for  luncheon,  on  the  morrow, 
on  the  yacht,  and  she  made  it  public  to  Rose  that 
she  would  come  that  afternoon  to  invite  her  mother. 


THE    CHAPERON.  24! 

When  the  girl  returned  to  the  hotel,  Mrs.  Tramore 
mentioned,  before  Captain  Jay,  who  had  come  up  to 
their  sitting-room,  that  Lady  Maresfield  had  called. 
"She  stayed  a  long  time  —  at  least  it  seemed  long!" 
laughed  Mrs.  Tramore. 

The  poor  lady  could  laugh  freely  now ;  yet  there 
was  some  grimness  in  a  colloquy  that  she  had  with 
her  daughter  after  Bertram  Jay  had  departed.  Be 
fore  this  happened  Mrs.  Vesey's  card,  scrawled  over 
in  pencil  and  referring  to  the  morrow's  luncheon, 
was  brought  up  to  Mrs.  Tramore. 

"They  mean  it  all  as  a  bribe,"  said  the  principal 
recipient  of  these  civilities. 

"  As  a  bribe  ?  "  Rose  repeated. 

"  She  wants  to  marry  you  to  that  boy ;  they've 
seen  Captain  Jay  and  they're  frightened." 

"  Well,  dear  mamma,  I  can't  take  Mr.  Mangier  for 
a  husband." 

"  Of  course  not.  But  oughtn't  we  to  go  to  the 
luncheon? " 

"  Certainly  we'll  go  to  the  luncheon,"  Rose  said; 
and  when  the  affair  took  place,  on  the  morrow,  she 
could  feel  for  the  first  time  that  she  was  taking  her 
mother  out.  This  appearance  was  somehow  brought 
home  to  every  one  else,  and  it  was  really  the  agent 
of  her  success.  For  it  is  of  the  essence  of  this 
simple  history  that,  in  the  first  place,  that  success 
dated  from  Mrs.  Vesey's  Venetian  dejeuner,  and  in 
the  second  reposed,  by  a  subtle  social  logic,  on  the 
very  anomaly  that  had  made  it  dubious.  There  is 


242  THE    CHAPERON. 

always  a  chance  in  things,  and  Rose  Tramore's 
chance  was  in  the  fact  that  Gwendolen  Vesey  was, 
as  some  one  had  said,  awfully  modern,  an  immense 
improvement  on  the  exploded  science  of  her  mother, 
and  capable  of  seeing  what  a  "draw"  there  would 
be  in  the  comedy,  if  properly  brought  out,  of  the 
reversed  positions  of  Mrs.  Tramore  and  Mrs.  Tra 
more's  diplomatic  daughter.  With  a  first-rate  mana 
gerial  eye  she  perceived  that  people  would  flock  into 
any  room  —  and  all  the  more  into  one  of  hers  —  to 
see  Rose  bring  in  her  dreadful  mother.  She  treated 
the  cream  of  English  society  to  this  thrilling  spec 
tacle  later  in  the  autumn,  when  she  once  more 
"secured"  both  the  performers  for  a  week  at  Brim- 
ble.  It  made  a  hit  on  the  spot,  the  very  first  even 
ing —  the  girl  was  felt  to  play  her  part  so  well.  The 
rumour  of  the  performance  spread  ;  every  one  wanted 
to  see  it.  It  was  an  entertainment  of  which,  that 
winter  in  the  country,  and  the  next  season  in  town, 
persons  of  taste  desired  to  give  their  friends  the 
v  freshness.  The  thing  was  to  make  the  Tramores 
come  late,  after  every  one  had  arrived.  They  were 
engaged  for  a  fixed  hour,  like  the  American  imitator 
and  the  Patagonian  contralto.  Mrs.  Vesey  had  been 
the  first  to  say  the  girl  was  awfully  original,  but  that 
became  the  general  view. 

Gwendolen  Vesey  had  with  her  mother  one  of  the 
few  quarrels  in  which  Lady  Maresfield  had  really 
stood  up  to  such  an  antagonist  (the  elder  woman  had 
to  recognise  in  general  in  whose  veins  it  was  that 


THE    CHAPERON.  243 

the  blood  of  the  Manglers  flowed)  on  account  of  this 
very  circumstance  of  her  attaching  more  importance 
to  Miss  Tramore's  originality  ("  Her  originality  be 
hanged ! "  her  ladyship  had  gone  so  far  as  unintelli- 
gently  to  exclaim)  than  to  the  prospects  of  the  un 
fortunate  Guy.  Mrs.  Vesey  actually  lost  sight  of 
these  pressing  problems  in  her  admiration  of  the 
way  the  mother  and  the  daughter,  or  rather  the 
daughter  and  the  mother  (it  was  slightly  confusing) 
"drew."  It  was  Lady  Maresfield's  version  of  the 
case  that  the  brazen  girl  (she  was  shockingly  coarse) 
had  treated  poor  Guy  abominably.  At  any  rate  it 
was  made  known,  just  after  Easter,  that  Miss  Tra- 
more  was  to  be  married  to  Captain  Jay.  The  mar 
riage  was  not  to  take  place  till  the  summer ;  but 
Rose  felt  that  before  this  the  field  would  practi 
cally  be  won.  There  had  been  some  bad  moments, 
there  had  been  several  warm  corners  and  a  certain 
number  of  cold  shoulders  and  closed  doors  and  stony 
stares;  but  the  breach  was  effectually  made  —  the 
rest  was  only  a  question  of  time.  Mrs.  Tramore 
could  be  trusted  to  keep  what  she  had  gained,  and 
it  was  the  dowagers,  the  old  dragons  with  promi 
nent  fangs  and  glittering  scales,  whom  the  trick  had 
already  mainly  caught.  By  this  time  there  were 
several  houses  into  which  the  liberated  lady  had 
crept  alone.  Her  daughter  had  been  expected  with 
her,  but  they  couldn't  turn  her  out  because  the  girl 
had  stayed  behind,  and  she  was  fast  acquiring  a  new 
identity,  that  of  a  parental  connection  with  the  hero- 


244  THE    CHAPERON. 

ine  of  such  a  romantic  story.  She  was  at  least  the 
next  best  thing  to  her  daughter,  and  Rose  foresaw 
the  day  when  she  would  be  valued  principally  as  a. 
memento  of  one  of  the  prettiest  episodes  in  the 
annals  of  London.  At  a  big  official  party,  in  June, 
Rose  had  the  joy  of  introducing  Eric  to  his  mother. 
She  was  a  little  sorry  it  was  an  official  party  —  there 
were  some  other  such  queer  people  there;  but  Eric 
called,  observing  the  shade,  the  next  day  but  one. 

No  observer,  probably,  would  have  been  acute 
enough  to  fix  exactly  the  moment  at  which  the  girl 
ceased  to  take  out  her  mother  and  began  to  be  taken 
out  by  her.  A  later  phase  was  more  distinguishable 

—  that  at  which  Rose  forbore  to  inflict  on  her  com 
panion  a  duality  that  might  become  oppressive.     She 
began  to  economise  her  force,  she  went  only  when 
the   particular   effect  was  required.      Her  marriage 
was  delayed  by  the  period  of  mourning  consequent 
upon  the  death  of  her  grandmother,  who,  the  younger 
Mrs.  Tramore  averred,  was  killed  by  the  rumour  of  her 
own  new  birth.     She  was  the  only  one  of  the  dragons 
who  had  not  been  tamed.     Julia  Tramore  knew  the 
truth  about  this  —  she  was  determined  such  things 
should  not  kill  her.     She  would  live  to  do  something 

—  she  hardly  knew  what.      The  provisions  of   her 
mother's   will  were    published    in    the    "  Illustrated 
News "  ;    from   which    it   appeared   that    everything 
that  was  not  to  go  to  Eric  and  to  Julia  was  to  go  to 
the  fortunate  Edith.     Miss  Tramore  makes  no  secret 
of    her    own    intentions   as   regards    this   favourite. 


THE    CHAPERON.  245 

Edith  is  not  pretty,  but  Lady  Maresfield  is  waiting 
for  her  ;  she  is  determined  Gwendolen  Vesey  shall 
not  get  hold  of  her.  Mrs.  Vesey  however  takes  no 
interest  in  her  at  all.  She  is  whimsical,  as  befits  a 
woman  of  her  fashion ;  bat  there  are  two  persons  she 
is  still  very  fond  of,  the  delightful  Bertram  Jays.  The 
fondness  of  this  pair,  it  must  be  added,  is  not  wholly 
expended  in  return.  They  are  extremely  united,  but 
their  life  is  more  domestic  than  might  have  been 
expected  from  the  preliminary  signs.  It  owes  a 
portion  of  its  concentration  to  the  fact  that  Mrs. 
Tramore  has  now  so  many  places  to  go  to  that  she 
has  almost  no  time  to  come  to  her  daughter's. 
She  is,  under  her  son-in-law's  roof,  a  brilliant  but  a 
rare  apparition,  and  the  other  day  he  remarked  upon 
the  circumstance  to  his  wife. 

"If  it  hadn't  been  for  you,"  she  replied,  smiling, 
"she  might  have  had  her  regular  place  at  our 
fireside." 

"  Good  heavens,  how  did  I  prevent  it  ? "  cried 
Captain  Jay,  with  all  the  consciousness  of  virtue. 

"  You  ordered  it  otherwise,  you  goose  !  "  And  she 
says,  in  the  same  spirit,  whenever  her  husband  com 
mends  her  (which  he  does,  sometimes,  extravagantly) 
for  the  way  she  launched  her  mother  :  "  Nonsense,  my 
dear  — practically  it  wasjw//" 


GREVILLE   FANE. 


GREVILLE  FANE. 

COMING  in  to  dress  for  dinner,  I  found  a  telegram : 
"Mrs.  Stormer  dying;  can  you  give  us  half  a  column 
for  to-morrow  evening  ?  Let  her  off  easy,  but  not  too 
easy."  I  was  late;  I  was  in  a  hurry;  I  had  very 
little  time  to  think,  but  at  a  venture  I  dispatched  a 
reply:  "Will  do  what  I  can."  It  was  not  till  I  had 
dressed  and  was  rolling  away  to  dinner  that,  in  the 
hansom,  I  bethought  myself  of  the  difficulty  of  the 
condition  attached.  The  difficulty  was  not  of  course 
in  letting  her  off  easy  but  in  qualifying  that  indul 
gence.  "  I  simply  won't  qualify  it,"  I  said  to  myself. 
I  didn't  admire  her,  but  I  liked  her,  and  I  had  known 
her  so  long  that  I  almost  felt  heartless  in  sitting 
down  at  such  an  hour  to  a  feast  of  indifference.  I 
must  have  seemed  abstracted,  for  the  early  years  of 
my  acquaintance  with  her  came  back  to  me.  I  spoke 
of  her  to  the  lady  I  had  taken  down,  but  the  lady  I 
had  taken  down  had  never  heard  of  Greville  Fane.  I 
tried  my  other  neighbour,  who  pronounced  her  books 
"too  vile."  I  had  never  thought  them  very  good, 
but  I  should  let  her  off  easier  than  that. 

I  came  away  early,  for  the  express  purpose  of 

249 


250  GREVILLE    FANE. 

driving  to  ask  about  her.  The  journey  took  time, 
for  she  lived  in  the  north-west  district,  in  the  neigh 
bourhood  of  Primrose  Hill.  My  apprehension  that  I 
should  be  too  late  was  justified  in  a  fuller  sense  than 
I  had  attached  to  it  —  I  had  only  feared  that  the 
house  would  be  shut  up.  There  were  lights  in  the 
windows,  and  the  temperate  tinkle  of  my  bell  brought 
a  servant  immediately  to  the  door,  but  poor  Mrs. 
Stormer  had  passed  into  a  state  in  which  the  reso 
nance  of  no  earthly  knocker  was  to  be  feared.  A 
lady,  in  the  hall,  hovering  behind  the  servant,  came 
forward  when  she  heard  my  voice.  I  recognised 
Lady  Luard,  but  she  had  mistaken  me  for  the  doctor. 

"  Excuse  my  appearing  at  such  an  hour,"  I  said ; 
"it  was  the  first  possible  moment  after  I  heard." 

"  It's  all  over,"  Lady  Luard  replied.  "  Dearest 
mamma !" 

She  stood  there  under  the  lamp  with  her  eyes  on 
me  ;  she  was  very  tall,  very  stiff,  very  cold,  and  always 
looked  as  if  these  things,  and  some  others  beside,  in 
her  dress,  her  manner  and  even  her  name,  were  an 
implication  that  she  was  very  admirable.  I  had 
never  been  able  to  follow  the  argument,  but  that  is  a 
detail.  I  expressed  briefly  and  frankly  what  I  felt, 
while  the  little  mottled  maidservant  flattened  herself 
against  the  wall  of  the  narrow  passage  and  tried  to 
look  detached  without  looking  indifferent.  It  was 
not  a  moment  to  make  a  visit,  and  I  was  on  the  point 
of  retreating  when  Lady  Luard  arrested  me  with  a 
queer,  casual,  drawling  "Would  you  —  a  —  would  you, 


GREVILLE    FANE.  251 

perhaps,  be  writing  something?"  I  felt  for  the 
instant  like  an  interviewer,  which  I  was  not.  But  I 
pleaded  guilty  to  this  intention,  on  which  she  re 
joined  :  "I'm  so  very  glad  —  but  I  think  my  brother 
would  like  to  see  you."  I  detested  her  brother,  but 
it  wasn't  an  occasion  to  act  this  out ;  so  I  suffered 
myself  to  be  inducted,  to  my  surprise,  into  a  small 
back  room  which  I  immediately  recognised  as  the 
scene,  during  the  later  years,  of  Mrs.  Stormer's  im 
perturbable  industry.  Her  table  was  there,  the  bat 
tered  and  blotted  accessory  to  innumerable  literary 
lapses,  with  its  contracted  space  for  the  arms  (she 
wrote  only  from  the  elbow  down)  and  the  confusion 
of  scrappy,  scribbled  sheets  which  had  already  be 
come  literary  remains.  Leolin  was  also  there,  smok 
ing  a  cigarette  before  the  fire  and  looking  impudent 
even  in  his  grief,  sincere  as  it  well  might  have  been. 

To  meet  him,  to  greet  him,  I  had  to  make  a  sharp 
effort ;  for  the  air  that  he  wore  to  me  as  he  stood 
before  me  was  quite  that  of  his  mother's  murderer. 
She  lay  silent  for  ever  upstairs  —  as  dead  as  an  un 
successful  book,  and  his  swaggering  erectness  was  a 
kind  of  symbol  of  his  having  killed  her.  I  wondered 
if  he  had  already,  with  his  sister,  been  calculating 
what  they  could  get  for  the  poor  papers  on  the  table ; 
but  I  had  not  long  to  wait  to  learn,  for  in  reply  to 
the  scanty  words  of  sympathy  I  addressed  him  he 
puffed  out :  "  It's  miserable,  miserable,  yes ;  but 
she  has  left  three  books  complete."  His  words  had 
the  oddest  effect ;  they  converted  the  cramped  little 


252  GREVILLE    FANE. 

room  into  a  seat  of  trade  and  made  the  "book" 
wonderfully  feasible.  He  would  certainly  get  all 
that  could  be  got  for  the  three.  Lady  Luard  ex 
plained  to  me  that  her  husband  had  been  with  them 
but  had  had  to  go  down  to  the  House.  To  her 
brother  she  explained  that  I  was  going  to  write 
something,  and  to  me  again  she  made  it  clear  that 
she  hoped  I  would  "do  mamma  justice."  She  added 
that  she  didn't  think  this  had  ever  been  done.  She 
said  to  her  brother  :  "  Don't  you  think  there  are 
some  things  he  ought  thoroughly  to  understand?" 
and  on  his  instantly  exclaiming  "  Oh,  thoroughly  — 
thoroughly  !  "  she  went  on,  rather  austerely  :  "  I  mean 
about  mamma's  birth." 

"  Yes,  and  her  connections,"  Leolin  added. 

I  professed  every  willingness,  and  for  five  minutes 
I  listened,  but  it  would  be  too  much  to  say  that  I 
understood.  I  don't  even  now,  but  it  is  not  impor 
tant.  My  vision  was  of  other  matters  than  those 
they  put  before  me,  and  while  they  desired  there 
should  be  no  mistake  about  their  ancestors  I  became 
more  and  more  lucid  about  themselves.  I  got  away 
as  soon  as  possible,  and  walked  home  through  the 
great  dusky,  empty  London  —  the  best  of  all  condi 
tions  for  thought.  By  the  time  I  reached  my  door 
my  little  article  was  practically  composed — ready 
to  be  transferred  on  the  morrow  from  the  polished 
plate  of  fancy.  I  believe  it  attracted  some  notice, 
was  thought  "graceful"  and  was  said  to  be  by  some 
one  else.  I  had  to  be  pointed  without  being  lively, 


GREVILLE    FANE.  253 

and  it  took  some  tact.  But  what  I  said  was  much 
less  interesting  than  what  I  thought  —  especially 
during  the  half-hour  I  spent  in  my  armchair  by  the 
fire,  smoking  the  cigar  I  always  light  before  going  to 
bed.  I  went  to  sleep  there,  I  believe  ;  but  I  contin 
ued  to  moralise  about  Greville  Fane.  I  am  reluctant 
to  lose  that  retrospect  altogether,  and  this  is  a  dim 
little  memory  of  it,  a  document  not  to  "serve."  The 
dear  woman  had  written  a  hundred  stories,  but  none 
so  curious  as  her  own. 

When  first  I  knew  her  she  had  published  half-a- 
dozen  fictions,  and  I  believe  I  had  also  perpetrated  a 
novel.  She  was  more  than  a  dozen  years  older  than 
I,  but  she  was  a  person  who  always  acknowledged 
her  relativity.  It  was  not  so  very  long  ago,  but  in 
London,  amid  the  big  waves  of  the  present,  even  a 
near  horizon  gets  hidden.  I  met  her  at  some  dinner 
and  took  her  down,  rather  flattered  at  offering  my 
arm  to  a  celebrity.  She  didn't  look  like  one,  with 
her  matronly,  mild,  inanimate  face,  but  I  supposed 
her  greatness  would  come  out  in  her  conversation. 
I  gave  it  all  the  opportunities  I  could,  but  I  was 
not  disappointed  when  I  found  her  only  a  dull,  kind 
woman.  This  was  why  I  liked  her  —  she  rested  me 
so  from  literature.  To  myself  literature  was  an  irri 
tation,  a  torment ;  but  Greville  Fane  slumbered  in 
the  intellectual  part  of  it  like  a  Creole  in  a  ham 
mock.  She  was  not  a  woman  of  genius,  but  her 
faculty  was  so  special,  so  much  a  gift  out  of  hand, 
that  I  have  often  wondered  why  she  fell  below  that 


254  GREV1LLE    FANE. 

distinction.  This  was  doubtless  because  the  transac 
tion,  in  her  case,  had  remained  incomplete ;  genius 
always  pays  for  the  gift,  feels  the  debt,  and  she  was 
placidly  unconscious  of  obligation.  She  could  invent 
stories  by  the  yard,  but  she  couldn't  write  a  page 
of  English.  She  went  down  to  her  grave  without 
suspecting  that  though  she  had  contributed  volumes 
to  the  diversion  of  her  contemporaries  she  had  not 
contributed  a  sentence  to  the  language.  This  had 
not  prevented  bushels  of  criticism  from  being  heaped 
upon  her  head;  she  was  worth  a  couple  of  columns 
any  day  to  the  weekly  papers,  in  which  it  was  shown 
that  her  pictures  of  life  were  dreadful  but  her  style 
really  charming.  She  asked  me  to  come  and  see 
her,  and  I  went.  She  lived  then  in  Montpellier 
Square  ;  which  helped  me  to  see  how  dissociated  her 
imagination  was  from  her  character. 

An  industrious  widow,  devoted  to  her  daily  stint, 
to  meeting  the  butcher  and  baker  and  making  a 
home  for  her  son  and  daughter,  from  the  moment 
she  took  her  pen  in  her  hand  she  became  a  creature 
of  passion.  She  thought  the  English  novel  deplora 
bly  wanting  in  that  element,  and  the  task  she  had 
cut  out  for  herself  was  to  supply  the  deficiency. 
Passion  in  high  life  was  the  general  formula  of  this 
work,  for  her  imagination  was  at  home  only  in  the 
most  exalted  circles.  She  adored,  in  truth,  the  aris 
tocracy,  and  they  constituted  for  her  the  romance 
of  the  world  or,  what  is  more  to  the  point,  the  prime 
material  of  fiction.  Their  beauty  and  luxury,  their 


GREVILLE    FANE.  255 

loves  and  revenges,  their  temptations  and  surrenders, 
their  immoralities  and  diamonds  were  as  familiar  to 
her  as  the  blots  on  her  writing-table.  She  was  not  a 
belated  producer  of  the  old  fashionable  novel,  she 
had  a  cleverness  and  a  modernness  of  her  own,  she 
had  freshened  up  the  fly-blown  tinsel.  She  turned 
off  plots  by  the  hundred  and  —  so  far  as  her  flying 
quill  could  convey  her  —  was  perpetually  going 
abroad.  Her  types,  her  illustrations,  her  tone  were 
nothing  if  not  cosmopolitan.  She  recognised  noth 
ing  less  provincial  than  European  society,  and  her 
fine  folk  knew  each  other  and  made  love  to  each 
other  from  Doncaster  to  Bucharest.  She  had  an 
idea  that  she  resembled  Balzac,  and  her  favourite 
historical  characters  were  Lucien  de  Rubempre  and 
the  Vidame  de  Pamiers.  I  must  add  that  when  I 
once  asked  her  who  the  latter  personage  was  she 
was  unable  to  tell  me.  She  was  very  brave  and 
healthy  and  cheerful,  very  abundant  and  innocent 
and  wicked.  She  was  clever  and  vulgar  and  snob 
bish,  and  never  so  intensely  British  as  when  she  was 
particularly  foreign. 

This  combination  of  qualities  had  brought  her 
early  success,  and  I  remember  having  heard  with 
wonder  and  envy  of  what  she  "got,"  in  those  days, 
for  a  novel.  The  revelation  gave  me  a  pang :  it  was 
such  a  proof  that,  practising  a  totally  different  style, 
I  should  never  make  my  fortune.  And  yet  when,  as 
I  knew  her  better  she  told  me  her  real  tariff  and  I 
saw  how  rumour  had  quadrupled  it,  I  liked  her 


256  GREVILLE    FANE. 

enough  to  be  sorry.  After  a  while  I  discovered  too 
that  if  she  got  less  it  was  not  that  /  was  to  get  any 
more.  My  failure  never  had  what  Mrs.  Stormer 
would  have  called  the  banality  of  being  relative  —  it 
was  always  admirably  absolute.  She  lived  at  ease 
however  in  those  days  —  ease  is  exactly  the  word, 
though  she  produced  three  novels  a  year.  She 
scorned  me  when  I  spoke  of  difficulty  —  it  was  the 
only  thing  that  made  her  angry.  If  I  hinted  that  a 
work  of  art  required  a  tremendous  licking  into  shape 
she  thought  it  a  pretension  and  a  pose.  She  never 
recognised  the  " torment  of  form"  ;  the  furthest  she 
went  was  to  introduce  into  one  of  her  books  (in 
satire  her  hand  was  heavy)  a  young  poet  who  was 
always  talking  about  it.  I  couldn't  quite  understand 
her  irritation  on  this  score,  for  she  had  nothing  at 
stake  in  the  matter.  She  had  a  shrewd  perception 
that  form,  in  prose  at  least,  never  recommended 
any  one  to  the  public  we  were  condemned  to  address, 
and  therefore  she  lost  nothing  (putting  her  private 
humiliation  aside)  by  not  having  any.  She  made  no 
pretence  of  producing  works  of  art,  but  had  com 
fortable  tea-drinking  hours  in  which  she  freely  con 
fessed  herself  a  common  pastrycook,  dealing  in  such 
tarts  and  puddings  as  would  bring  customers  to  the 
shop.  She  put  in  plenty  of  sugar  and  of  cochineal, 
or  whatever  it  is  that  gives  these  articles  a  rich  and 
attractive  colour.  She  had  a  serene  superiority  to 
observation  and  opportunity  which  constituted  an 
inexpugnable  strength  and  would  enable  her  to  go 


GREVILLE    FANE. 

on  indefinitely.  It  is  only  real  success  that  wanes, 
it  is  only  solid  things  that  melt.  Greville  Fane's 
ignorance  of  life  was  a  resource  still  more  unfailing 
than  the  most  approved  receipt.  On  her  saying 
once  that  the  day  would  come  when  she  should  have 
written  herself  out  I  answered:  " Ah,  you  look  into 
fairyland,  and  the  fairies  love  you,  and  they  never 
change.  Fairyland  is  always  there ;  it  always  was 
from  the  beginning  of  time,  and  it  always  will  be  to 
the  end.  They've  given  you  the  key  and  you  can 
always  open  the  door.  With  me  it's  different ;  I  try, 

'•>* »  ^- 

in  my  clumsy  way,  to  be  in  some  direct  relation  to 
life."  "  Oh,  bother  your  direct  relation  to  life ! " 
she  used  to  reply,  for  she  was  always  annoyed  by 
the  phrase  —  which  would  not  in  the  least  prevent 
her  from  using  it  when  she  wished  to  try  for  style. 
With  no  more  prejudices  than  an  old  sausage-mill, 
she  would  give  forth  again  with  patient  punctuality 
any  poor  verbal  scrap  that  had  been  dropped  into 
her.  I  cheered  her  with  saying  that  the  dark  day,  at 
the  end,  would  be  for  the  like  of  me ;  inasmuch  as, 
going  in  our  small  way  by  experience  and  observa 
tion,  we  depended  not  on  a  revelation,  but  on  a  little 
tiresome  process.  Observation  depended  on  oppor 
tunity,  and  where  should  we  be  when  opportunity 
failed  ? 

One  day  she  told  me  that  as  the  novelist's  life  was 
so  delightful  and  during  the  good  years  at  least  such 
a  comfortable  support  (she  had  these  staggering  opti 
misms)  she  meant  to  train  up  her  boy  to  follow  it. 


258  GREVILLE    FANE. 

She  took  the  ingenious  view  that  it  was  a  profession 
like  another  and  that  therefore  everything  was  to  be 
gained  by  beginning  young  and  serving  an  appren 
ticeship.  Moreover  the  education  would  be  less  ex 
pensive  than  any  other  special  course,  inasmuch  as 
she  could  administer  it  herself.  She  didn't  profess 
to  keep  a  school,  but  she  could  at  least  teach  her  own 
child.  It  was  not  that  she  was  so  very  clever,  but 
(she  confessed  to  me  as  if  she  were  afraid  I  would 
laugh  at  her)  that  he  was.  I  didn't  laugh  at  her  for 
that,  for  I  thought  the  boy  sharp  —  I  had  seen  him 
at  sundry  times.  He  was  well  grown  and  good- 
looking  and  unabashed,  and  both  he  and  his  sister 
made  me  wonder  about  their  defunct  papa,  concern 
ing  whom  the  little  I  knew  was  that  he  had  been  a 
clergyman.  I  explained  them  to  myself  by  supposi 
tions  and  imputations  possibly  unjust  to  the  departed; 
so  little  were  they  —  superficially  at  least  —  the  chil 
dren  of  their  mother.  There  used  to  be,  on  an  easel 
in  her  drawing-room,  an  enlarged  photograph  of  her 
husband,  done  by  some  horrible  posthumous  " proc 
ess  "  and  draped,  as  to  its  florid  frame,  with  a  silken 
scarf,  which  testified  to  the  candour  of  Greville  Fane's 
bad  taste.  It  made  him  look  like  an  unsuccessful 
tragedian  ;  but  it  was  not  a  thing  to  trust.  He  may 
have  been  a  successful  comedian.  Of  the  two  chil 
dren  the  girl  was  the  elder,  and  struck  me  in  all  her 
younger  years  as  singularly  colourless.  She  was 
only  very  long,  like  an  undecipherable  letter.  It  was 
not  till  Mrs.  Stormer  came  back  from  a  protracted 


GREVILLE    FANE.  25Q 

residence  abroad  that  Ethel  (which  was  this  young 
lady's  name)  began  to  produce  the  effect,  which  was 
afterwards  remarkable  in  her,  of  a  certain  kind  of 
high  resolution.  She  made  one  apprehend  that  she 
meant  to  do  something  for  herself.  She  was  long- 
necked  and  near-sighted  and  striking,  and  I  thought 
I  had  never  seen  sweet  seventeen  in  a  form  so  hard 
and  high  and  dry.  She  was  cold  and  affected  and 
ambitious,  and  she  carried  an  eyeglass  with  a  long 
handle,  which  she  put  up  whenever  she  wanted  not 
to  see.  She  had  come  out,  as  the  phrase  is,  im 
mensely  ;  and  yet  I  felt  as  if  she  were  surrounded 
with  a  spiked  iron  railing.  What  she  meant  to  do 
for  herself  was  to  marry,  and  it  was  the  only  thing,  I 
think,  that  she  meant  to  do  for  any  one  else ;  yet  who 
would  be  inspired  to  clamber  over  that  bristling 
barrier?  What  flower  of  tenderness  or  of  intimacy 
would  such  an  adventurer  conceive  as  his  reward  ? 

This  was  for  Sir  Baldwin  Luard  to  say ;  but  he 
naturally  never  confided  to  me  the  secret.  He  was  a 
joyless,  jokeless  young  man,  with  the  air  of  having 
other  secrets  as  well,  and  a  determination  to  get  on 
politically  that  was  indicated  by  his  never  having  been 
known  to  commit  himself  —  as  regards  any  propo 
sition  whatever  —  beyond  an  exclamatory  "Oh!" 
His  wife  and  he  must  have  conversed  mainly  in  prim 
ejaculations,  but  they  understood  sufficiently  that 
they  were  kindred  spirits.  I  remember  being  angry 
with  Greville  Fane  when  she  announced  these  nup 
tials  to  me  as  magnificent ;  I  remember  asking  her 


260  GREVILLE    FANE. 

what  splendour  there  was  in  the  union  of  the  daugh 
ter  of  a  woman  of  genius  with  an  irredeemable  medi 
ocrity.  "  Oh !  he's  awfully  clever,"  she  said;  but  she 
blushed  for  the  maternal  fib.  What  she  meant  was 
that  though  Sir  Baldwin's  estates  were  not  vast  (he 
had  a  dreary  house  in  South  Kensington  and  a  still 
drearier  "Hall"  somewhere  in  Essex,  which  was  let), 
the  connection  was  a  "smarter"  one  than  a  child  of 
hers  could  have  aspired  to  form.  In  spite  of  the  social 
bravery  of  her  novels  she  took  a  very  humble  and 
dingy  view  of  herself,  so  that  of  all  her  productions 
"  my  daughter  Lady  Luard  "  was  quite  the  one  she 
was  proudest  of.  That  personage  thought  her  mother 
very  vulgar  and  was  distressed  and  perplexed  by  the 
occasional  license  of  her  pen,  but  had  a  complicated 
attitude  in  regard  to  this  indirect  connection  with 
literature.  So  far  as  it  was  lucrative  her  ladyship 
approved  of  it,  and  could  compound  with  the  inferi 
ority  of  the  pursuit  by  doing  practical  justice  to  some 
of  its  advantages.  I  had  reason  to  know  (my  reason 
was  simply  that  poor  Mrs.  Stormer  told  me)  that  she 
suffered  the  inky  fingers  to  press  an  occasional  bank 
note  into  her  palm.  On  the  other  hand  she  deplored 
the  "peculiar  style"  to  which  Greville  Fane  had 
devoted  herself,  and  wondered  where  an  author  who 
had  the  convenience  of  so  lady-like  a  daughter  could 
have  picked  up  such  views  about  the  best  society. 
"She  might  know  better,  with  Leolin  and  me,"  Lady 
Luard  had  been  known  to  remark ;  but  it  appeared 
that  some  of  Greville  Fane's  superstitions  were  in- 


GREVILLE    FANE.  26l 

curable.  She  didn't  live  in  Lady  Luard's  society, 
and  the  best  was  not  good  enough  for  her  —  she 
must  make  it  still  better. 

I  could  see  that  this  necessity  grew  upon  her 
during  the  years  she  spent  abroad,  when  I  had 
glimpses  of  her  in  the  shifting  sojourns  that  lay  in 
the  path  of  my  annual  ramble.  She  betook  herself 
from  Germany  to  Switzerland  and  from  Switzerland 
to  Italy  ;  she  favoured  cheap  places  and  set  up  her 
desk  in  the  smaller  capitals.  I  took  a  look  at  her 
whenever  I  could,  and  I  always  asked  how  Leolin 
was  getting  on.  She  gave  me  beautiful  accounts  of 
him,  and  whenever  it  was  possible  the  boy  was 
produced  for  my  edification.  I  had  entered  from 
the  first  into  the  joke  of  his  career  —  I  pretended 
to  regard  him  as  a  consecrated  child.  It  had  been  a 
joke  for  Mrs.  Stormer  at  first,  but  the  boy  himself 
had  been  shrewd  enough  to  make  the  matter  serious. 
If  his  mother  accepted  the  principle  that  the  intend 
ing  novelist  cannot  begin  too  early  to  see  life,  Leolin 
was  not  interested  in  hanging  back  from  the  applica 
tion  of  it.  He  was  eager  to  qualify  himself,  and  took 
to  cigarettes  at  ten,  on  the  highest  literary  grounds. 
His  poor  mother  gazed  at  him  with  extravagant  envy 
and,  like  Desdemona,  wished  heaven  had  made  her 
such  a  man.  She  explained  to  me  more  than  once 
that  in  her  profession  she  had  found  her  sex  a  dread 
ful  drawback.  She  loved  the  story  of  Madame 
George  Sand's  early  rebellion  against  this  hindrance, 
and  believed  that  if  she  had  worn  trousers  she  could 


262  GREVILLE    FANE. 

have  written  as  well  as  that  lady.  Leolin  had  for 
the  career  at  least  the  qualification  of  trousers,  and 
as  he  grew  older  he  recognised  its  importance  by 
laying  in  an  immense  assortment.  He  grew  up  in 
gorgeous  apparel,  which  was  his  way  of  interpreting 
his  mother's  system.  Whenever  I  met  her  I  found 
her  still  under  the  impression  that  she  was  carrying 
this  system  out  and  that  Leolin's  training  was  bear 
ing  fruit.  She  was  giving  him  experience,  she  was 
giving  him  impressions,  she  was  putting  a  gagne- 
pain  into  his  hand.  It  was  another  name  for  spoiling 
him  with  the  best  conscience  in  the  world.  The 
queerest  pictures  come  back  to  me  of  this  period 
of  the  good  lady's  life  and  of  the  extraordinarily 
virtuous,  muddled,  bewildering  tenor  of  it.  She  had 
an  idea  that  she  was  seeing  foreign  manners  as  well 
as  her  petticoats  would  allow  ;  but,  in  reality  she  was 
not  seeing  anything,  least  of  all  fortunately  how 
much  she  was  laughed  at.  She  drove  her  whimsical 
pen  at  Dresden  and  at  Florence,  and  produced  in  all 
places  and  at  all  times  the  same  romantic  and 
ridiculous  fictions.  She  carried  about  her  box  of 
properties  and  fished  out  promptly  the  familiar, 
tarnished  old  puppets.  She  believed  in  them  when 
others  couldn't,  and  as  they  were  like  nothing  that 
was  to  be  seen  under  the  sun  it  was  impossible  to 
prove  by  comparison  that  they  were  wrong.  You 
can't  compare  birds  and  fishes;  you  could  only  feel 
that,  as  Greville  Fane's  characters  had  the  fine 
plumage  of  the  former  species,  human  beings  must 
be  of  the  latter. 


GREVILLE    FANE.  263 

It  would  have  been  droll  if  it  had  not  been  so 
exemplary  to  see  her  tracing  the  loves  of  the  duch 
esses  beside  the  innocent  cribs  of  her  children.  The 
immoral  and  the  maternal  lived  together  in  her  dili 
gent  days  on  the  most  comfortable  terms,  and  she 
stopped  curling  the  mustaches  of  her  Guardsmen  to 
pat  the  heads  of  her  babes.  She  was  haunted  by 
solemn  spinsters  who  came  to  tea  from  continental 
pensions,  and  by  unsophisticated  Americans  who  told 
her  she  was  just  loved  in  their  country.  "I  had 
rather  be  just  paid  there,"  she  usually  replied ;  for 
this  tribute  of  transatlantic  opinion  was  the  only 
thing  that  galled  her.  The  Americans  went  away 
thinking  her  coarse ;  though  as  the  author  of  so 
many  beautiful  love-stories  she  was  disappointing  to 
most  of  these  pilgrims,  who  had  not  expected  to  find 
a  shy,  stout,  ruddy  lady  in  a  cap  like  a  crumbled 
pyramid.  She  wrote  about  the  affections  and  the 
impossibility  of  controlling  them,  but  she  talked  of 
the  price  of  pension  and  the  convenience  of  an  Eng- 
glish  chemist.  She  devoted  much  thought  and  many 
thousands  of  francs  to  the  education  of  her  daughter, 
who  spent  three  years  at  a  very  superior  school  at 
Dresden,  receiving  wonderful  instruction  in  sciences, 
arts  and  tongues,  and  who,  taking  a  different  line 
from  Leolin,  was  to  be  brought  up  wholly  as  ^femme 
du  monde.  The  girl  was  musical  and  philological  ; 
she  made  a  specialty  of  languages  and  learned  enough 
about  them  to  be  inspired  with  a  great  contempt  for 
her  mother's  artless  accents.  Greville  Fane's  French 


264  GREVILLE    FANE. 

and  Italian  were  droll ;  the  imitative  faculty  had  been 
denied  her,  and  she  had  an  unequalled  gift,  especially 
pen  in  hand,  of  squeezing  big  mistakes  into  small 
opportunities.  She  knew  it,  but  she  didn't  care ; 
correctness  was  the  virtue  in  the  world  that,  like  her 
heroes  and  heroines,  she  valued  least.  Ethel,  who 
had  perceived  in  her  pages  some  remarkable  lapses, 
undertook  at  one  time  to  revise  her  proofs ;  but  I 
remember  her  telling  me  a  year  after  the  girl  had  left 
school  that  this  function  had  been  very  briefly  exer 
cised.  "She  can't  read  me,"  said  Mrs.  Stormer ;  "I 
offend  her  taste.  She  tells  me  that  at  Dresden  — 
at  school  —  I  was  never  allowed."  The  good  lady 
seemed  surprised  at  this,  having  the  best  conscience 
in  the  world  about  her  lucubrations.  She  had  never 
meant  to  fly  in  the  face  of  anything,  and  considered 
that  she  grovelled  before  the  Rhadamanthus  of  the 
English  literary  tribunal,  the  celebrated  and  awful 
Young  Person.  I  assured  her,  as  a  joke,  that  she 
was  frightfully  indecent  (she  hadn't  in  fact  that 
reality  any  more  than  any  other)  my  purpose  being 
solely  to  prevent  her  from  guessing  that  her  daughter 
had  dropped  her  not  because  she  was  immoral  but 
because  she  was  vulgar.  I  used  to  figure  her  chil 
dren  closeted  together  and  asking  each  other  while 
they  exchanged  a  gaze  of  dismay  :  "  Why  should  she 
be  so  —  and  so  fearfully  so — when  she  has  the  ad 
vantage  of  our  society  ?  Shouldn't  we  have  taught 
her  better?"  Then  I  imagined  their  recognising 
with  a  blush  and  a  shrug  that  she  was  unteachable, 


GREVILLE    FANE.  265 

irreformable.  Indeed  she  was,  poor  lady ;  but  it  is 
never  fair  to  read  by  the  light  of  taste  things  that 
were  not  written  by  it.  Greville  Fane  had,  in  the 
topsy-turvy,  a  serene  good  faith  that  ought  to  have 
been  safe  from  allusion,  like  a  stutter  or  ^faiix pas. 

She  didn't  make  her  son  ashamed  of  the  profession 
to  which  he  was  destined,  however ;  she  only  made 
him  ashamed  of  the  way  she  herself  exercised  it. 
But  he  bore  his  humiliation  much  better  than  his 
sister,  for  he  was  ready  to  take  for  granted  that  he 
should  one  day  restore  the  balance.  He  was  a  canny 
and  far-seeing  youth,  with  appetites  and  aspirations, 
and  he  had  not  a  scruple  in  his  composition.  His 
mother's  theory  of  the  happy  knack  he  could  pick  up 
deprived  him  of  the  wholesome  discipline  required  to 
prevent  young  idlers  from  becoming  cads.  He  had, 
abroad,  a  casual  tutor  and  a  snatch  or  two  of  a  Swiss 
school,  but  no  consecutive  study,  no  prospect  of  a 
university  or  a  degree.  It  may  be  imagined  with 
what  zeal,  as  the  years  went  on,  he  entered  into  the 
pleasantry  of  there  being  no  manual  so  important  to 
him  as  the  massive  book  of  life.  It  was  an  expensive 
volume  to  peruse,  but  Mrs.  Stormer  was  willing  to 
lay  out  a  sum  in  what  she  would  have  called  her  pre 
miers  frais.  Ethel  disapproved  —  she  thought  this 
education  far  too  unconventional  for  an  English 
gentleman.  Her  voice  was  for  Eton  and  Oxford,  or 
for  any  public  school  (she  would  have  resigned  her 
self)  with  the  army  to  follow.  But  Leolin  never  was 
afraid  of  his  sister,  and  they  visibly  disliked,  though 


266  GREVILLE    FANE. 

they  sometimes  agreed  to  assist,  each  other.  They 
could  combine  to  work  the  oracle  —  to  keep  their 
mother  at  her  desk. 

When  she  came  back  to  England,  telling  me  she 
had  got  all  the  continent  could  give  her,  Leolin  was 
a  broad-shouldered,  red-faced  young  man,  with  an 
immense  wardrobe  and  an  extraordinary  assurance  of 
manner.  She  was  fondly  obstinate  about  her  having 
taken  the  right  course  with  him,  and  proud  of  all  that 
he  knew  and  had  seen.  He  was  now  quite  ready  to 
begin,  and  a  little  while  later  she  told  me  he  had 
begun.  He  had  written  something  tremendously 
clever,  and  it  was  coming  out  in  the  Cheapside.  I 
believe  it  came  out  ;  I  had  no  time  to  look  for  it  ;  I 
never  heard  anything  about  it.  I  took  for  granted 
that  if  this  contribution  had  passed  through  his 
mother's  hands  it  had  practically  become  a  specimen 
of  her  own  genius,  and  it  was  interesting  to  consider 
Mrs.  Stormer's  future  in  the  light  of  her  having  to 
write  her  son's  novels  as  well  as  her  own.  This  was 
not  the  way  she  looked  at  it  herself ;  she  took  the 
charming  ground  that  he  would  help  her  to  write 
hers.  She  used  to  tell  me  that  he  supplied  passages 
of  the  greatest  value  to  her  own  work  —  all  sorts  of 
technical  things,  about  hunting  and  yachting  and 
wine  —  that  she  couldn't  be  expected  to  get  very 
straight.  It  was  all  so  much  practice  for  him  and  so 
mnch  alleviation  for  her.  I  was  unable  to  identify 
these  pages,  for  I  had  long  since  ceased  to  "keep  up" 
with  Greville  Fane ;  but  I  was  quite  able  to  believe 


GREV1LLE    FANE.  267 

that  the  wine-question  had  been  put,  by  Leolin's  good 
offices,  on  a  better  footing,  for  the  dear  lady  used  to 
mix  her  drinks  (she  was  perpetually  serving  the  most 
splendid  suppers)  in  the  queerest  fashion.  I  could 
see  that  he  was  willing  enough  to  accept  a  commis 
sion  to  look  after  that  department.  It  occurred  to 
me  indeed,  when  Mrs.  Stormer  settled  in  England 
again,  that  by  making  a  shrewd  use  of  both  her 
children  she  might  be  able  to  rejuvenate  her  style. 
Ethel  had  come  back  to  gratify  her  young  ambition, 
and  if  she  couldn't  take  her  mother  into  society  she 
would  at  least  go  into  it  herself.  Silently,  stiffly, 
almost  grimly,  this  young  lady  held  up  her  head, 
clenched  her  long  teeth,  squared  her  lean  elbows  and 
made  her  way  up  the  staircases  she  had  elected.  The 
only  communication  she  ever  made  to  me,  the  only 
effusion  of  confidence  with  which  she  ever  honoured 
me,  was  when  she  said  :  "  I  don't  want  to  know  the 
people  mamma  knows  ;  I  mean  to  know  others."  I 
took  due  note  of  the  remark,  for  I  was  not  one  of  the 
"others."  I  couldn't  trace  therefore  the  steps  of 
her  process  ;  I  could  only  admire  it  at  a  distance  and 
congratulate  her  mother  on  the  results.  The  results 
were  that  Ethel  went  to  "big"  parties  and  got  peo 
ple  to  take  her.  Some  of  them  were  people  she  had 
met  abroad,  and  others  were  people  whom  the  people 
she  had  met  abroad  had  met.  They  ministered  alike 
to  Miss  Ethel's  convenience,  and  I  wondered  how  she 
extracted  so  many  favours  without  the  expenditure 
of  a  smile.  Her  smile  was  the  dimmest  thing  in 


268  GREVILLE    FANE. 

the  world,  diluted  lemonade,  without  sugar,  and  she 
had  arrived  precociously  at  social  wisdom,  recognising 
that  if  she  was  neither  pretty  enough  nor  rich  enough 
nor  clever  enough,  she  could  at  least  in  her  muscular 
youth  be  rude  enough.  Therefore  if  she  was  able 
to  tell  her  mother  what  really  took  place  in  the  man 
sions  of  the  great,  give  her  notes  to  work  from,  the 
quill  could  be  driven  at  home  to  better  purpose  and 
precisely  at  a  moment  when  it  would  have  to  be  more 
active  than  ever.  But  if  she  did  tell,  it  would  appear 
that  poor  Mrs.  Stormer  didn't  believe.  As  regards 
many  points  this  was  not  a  wonder ;  at  any  rate  I 
heard  nothing  of  Greville  Fane's  having  developed  a 
new  manner.  She  had  only  one  manner  from  start 
to  finish,  as  Leolin  would  have  said. 

She  was  tired  at  last,  but  she  mentioned  to  me 
that  she  couldn't  afford  to  pause.  She  continued  to 
speak  of  Leolin's  work  as  the  great  hope  of  their 
future  (she  had  saved  no  money)  though  the  young 
man  wore  to  my  sense  an  aspect  more  and  more 
professional  if  you  like,  but  less  and  less  literary. 
At  the  end  of  a  couple  of  years  there  was  something 
monstrous  in  the  impudence  with  which  he  played 
his  part  in  the  comedy.  When  I  wondered  how  she 
could  play  her  part  I  had  to  perceive  that  her  good 
faith  was  complete  and  that  what  kept  it  so  was 
simply  her  extravagant  fondness.  She  loved  the 
young  impostor  with  a  simple,  blind,  benighted  love, 
and  of  all  the  heroes  of  romance  who  had  passed 
before  her  eyes  he  was  by  far  the  most  brilliant. 


GREVILLE    FANE.  269 

He  was  at  any  rate  the  most  real  —  she  could  touch 
him,  pay  for  him,  suffer  for  him,  worship  him.  He 
made  her  think  of  her  princes  and  dukes,  and  when 
she  wished  to  fix  these  figures  in  her  mind's  eye  she 
thought  of  her  boy.  She  had  often  told  me  she  was 
carried  away  by  her  own  creations,  and  she  was  cer 
tainly  carried  away  by  Leolin.  He  vivified,  by  poten 
tialities  at  least,  the  whole  question  of  youth  and 
passion.  She  held,  not  unjustly,  that  the  sincere 
novelist  should  feel  the  whole  flood  of  life ;  she 
acknowledged  with  regret  that  she  had  not  had  time 
to  feel  it  herself,  and  it  was  a  joy  to  her  that  the  defi 
ciency  might  be  supplied  by  the  sight  of  the  way  it 
was  rushing  through  this  magnificent  young  man. 
She  exhorted  him,  I  suppose,  to  let  it  rush ;  she 
wrung  her  own  flaccid  little  sponge  into  the  torrent. 
I  knew  not  what  passed  between  them  in  her  hours 
of  tuition,  but  I  gathered  that  she  mainly  impressed 
on  him  that  the  great  thing  was  to  live,  because  that 
gave  you  material.  He  asked  nothing  better ;  he 
collected  material,  and  the  formula  served  as  a  uni 
versal  pretext.  You  had  only  to  look  at  him  to  see 
that,  with  his  rings  and  breastpins,  his  cross-barred 
jackets,  his  early  embonpoint,  his  eyes  that  looked 
like  imitation  jewels,  his  various  indications  of  a 
dense,  full-blown  temperament,  his  idea  of  life  was 
singularly  vulgar ;  but  he  was  not  so  far  wrong  as 
that  his  response  to  his  mother's  expectations  was 
not  in  a  high  degree  practical.  If  she  had  imposed 
a  profession  on  him  from  his  tenderest  years  it  was 


27O  GREVILLE    FANE. 

exactly  a  profession  that  he  followed.  The  two  were 
not  quite  the  same,  inasmuch  as  his  was  simply  to 
live  at  her  expense ;  but  at  least  she  couldn't  say 
that  he  hadn't  taken  a  line.  If  she  insisted  on  believ 
ing  in  him  he  offered  himself  to  the  sacrifice.  My 
impression  is  that  her  secret  dream  was  that  he  should 
have  a  liaison  with  a  countess,  and  he  persuaded  her 
without  difficulty  that  he  had  one.  I  don't  know 
what  countesses  are  capable  of,  but  I  have  a  clear 
notion  of  what  Leolin  was. 

He  didn't  persuade  his  sister,  who  despised  him  — 
she  wished  to  work  her  mother  in  her  own  way,  and 
I  asked  myself  why  the  girl's  judgment  of  him  didn't 
make  me  like  her  better.  It  was  because  it  didn't 
save  her  after  all  from  a  mute  agreement  with  him  to 
go  halves.  There  were  moments  when  I  couldn't 
help  looking  hard  into  his  atrocious  young  eyes, 
challenging  him  to  confess  his  fantastic  fraud  and 
give  it  up.  Not  a  little  tacit  conversation  passed 
between  us  in  this  way,  but  he  had  always  the  best 
of  it.  If  I  said :  "  Oh,  come  now,  with  me  you 
needn't  keep  it  up;  plead  guilty,  and  I'll  let  you 
off,"  he  wore  the  most  ingenuous,  the  most  candid 
expression,  in  the  depths  of  which  I  could  read : 
"Oh,  yes,  I  know  it  exasperates  you  —  that's  just 
why  I  do  it."  He  took  the  line  of  earnest  inquiry, 
talked  about  Balzac  and  Flaubert,  asked  me  if  I 
thought  Dickens  did  exaggerate  and  Thackeray 
ought  to  be  called  a  pessimist.  Once  he  came  to 
see  me,  at  his  mother's  suggestion  he  declared,  on 


GREVILLE    FANE.  2/1 

purpose  to  ask  me  how  far,  in  my  opinion,  in  the 
English  novel,  one  really  might  venture  to  "  go."  He 
was  not  resigned  to  the  usual  pruderies  —  he  suffered 
under  them  already.  He  struck  out  the  brilliant 
idea  that  nobody  knew  how  far  we  might  go,  for 
nobody  had  ever  tried.  Did  I  think  he  might  safely 
try — would  it  injure  his  mother  if  he  did?  He 
would  rather  disgrace  himself  by  his  timidities  than 
injure  his  mother,  but  certainly  some  one  ought  to 
try.  Wouldn't  /  try  —  couldn't  I  be  prevailed  upon 
to  look  at  it  as  a  duty?  Surely  the  ultimate  point 
ought  to  be  fixed  —  he  was  worried,  haunted  by  the 
question.  He  patronised  me  unblushingly,  made  me 
feel  like  a  foolish  amateur,  a  helpless  novice,  inquired 
into  my  habits  of  work  and  conveyed  to  me  that  I 
was  utterly  vieuxjeu  and  had  not  had  the  advantage 
of  an  early  training.  I  had  not  been  brought  up  from 
the  germ,  I  knew  nothing  of  life  —  didn't  go  at  it  on 
his  system.  He  had  dipped  into  French  feuilletons 
and  picked  up  plenty  of  phrases,  and  he  made  a 
much  better  show  in  talk  than  his  poor  mother, 
who  never  had  time  to  read  anything  and  could  only 
be  vivid  with  her  pen.  If  I  didn't  kick  him  down 
stairs  it  was  because  he  would  have  alighted  on  her 
at  the  bottom. 

When  she  went  to  live  at  Primrose  Hill  I  called 
upon  her  and  found  her  weary  and  wasted.  It  had 
waned  a  good  deal,  the  elation  caused  the  year  before 
by  Ethel's  marriage ;  the  foam  on  the  cup  had  sub 
sided  and  there  was  a  bitterness  in  the  draught. 


GREVILLE    FANE. 


She  had  had  to  take  a  cheaper  house  and  she  had 
to  work  still  harder  to  pay  even  for  that.  Sir  Bald 
win  was  obliged  to  be  close  ;  his  charges  were 
fearful,  and  the  dream  of  her  living  with  her 
daughter  (a  vision  she  had  never  mentioned  to 
me)  must  be  renounced.  "  I  would  have  helped 
with  things,  and  I  could  have  lived  perfectly  in  one 
room,"  she  said  ;  "  I  would  have  paid  for  everything, 
and  —  after  all  —  I'm  some  one,  ain't  I  ?  But  I  don't 
fit  in,  and  Ethel  tells  me  there  are  tiresome  people 
she  must  receive.  I  can  help  them  from  here,  no 
doubt,  better  than  from  there.  She  told  me  once, 
you  know,  what  she  thinks  of  my  picture  of  life. 
'Mamma,  your  picture  of  life  is  preposterous!'  No 
doubt  it  is,  but  she's  vexed  with  me  for  letting  my 
prices  go  down  ;  and  I  had  to  write  three  novels  to 
pay  for  all  her  marriage  cost  me.  I  did  it  very  well 
—  I  mean  the  outfit  and  the  wedding;  but  that's 
why  I'm  here.  At  any  rate  she  doesn't  want  a 
dingy  old  woman  in  her  house.  I  should  give  it  an 
atmosphere  of  literary  glory,  but  literary  glory  is 
only  the  eminence  of  nobodies.  Besides,  she  doubts 
my  glory  —  she  knows  I'm  glorious  only  at  Peckham 
and  Hackney.  She  doesn't  want  her  friends  to  ask 
if  I've  never  known  nice  people.  She  can't  tell 
them  I've  never  been  in  society.  She  tried  to  teach 
me  better  once,  but  I  couldn't  learn.  It  would  seem 
too  as  if  Peckham  and  Hackney  had  had  enough  of 
me;  for  (don't  tell  any  one!)  I've  had  to  take  less 
for  my  last  than  I  ever  took  for  anything."  I  asked 


GREVILLE    FANE.  2/3 

her  how  little  this  had  been,  not  from  curiosity,  but 
in  order  to  upbraid  her,  more  disinterestedly  than 
Lady  Luard  had  done,  for  such  concessions.  She 
answered  "  I'm  ashamed  to  tell  you,"  and  then  she 
began  to  cry. 

I  had  never  seen  her  break  down,  and  I  was  pro 
portionately  moved ;  she  sobbed,  like  a  frightened 
child,  over  the  extinction  of  her  vogue  and  the 
exhaustion  of  her  vein.  Her  little  workroom 
seemed  indeed  a  barren  place  to  grow  flowers,  and 
I  wondered,  in  the  after  years  (for  she  continued  to 
produce  and  publish)  by  what  desperate  and  heroic 
process  she  dragged  them  out  of  the  soil.  I  re 
member  asking  her  on  that  occasion  what  had 
become  of  Leolin,  and  how  much  longer  she  in 
tended  to  allow  him  to  amuse  himself  at  her  cost. 
She  rejoined  with  spirit,  wiping  her  eyes,  that  he 
was  down  at  Brighton  hard  at  work  —  he  was  in  the 
midst  of  a  novel  —  and  that  ^  felt  life  so,  in  all  its 
misery  and  mystery,  that  it  was  cruel  to  speak  of 
such  experiences  as  a  pleasure.  "  He  goes  beneath 
the  surface,"  she  said,  "and  he  forces  himself  to 
look  at  things  from  which  he  would  rather  turn 
away.  Do  you  call  that  amusing  yourself  ?  You 
should  see  his  face  sometimes  !  And  he  does  it  for 
me  as  much  as  for  himself.  He  tells  me  everything 
—  he  comes  home  to  me  with  his  trouvailles.  We 
are  artists  together,  and  to  the  artist  all  things  are 
pure.  I've  often  heard  you  say  so  yourself."  The 
novel  that  Leolin  was  engaged  in  at  Brighton  was 


2/4  GREVILLE    FANE. 

never  published,  but  a  friend  of  mine  and  of  Mrs. 
Stormer's  who  was  staying  there  happened  to 
mention  to  me  later  that  he  had  seen  the  young 
apprentice  to  fiction  driving,  in  a  dogcart,  a  young 
lady  with  a  very  pink  face.  When  I  suggested  that 
she  was  perhaps  a  woman  of  title  with  whom  he  was 
conscientiously  flirting  my  informant  replied  :  "  She 
is  indeed,  but  do  you  know  what  her  title  is  ?  "  He 
pronounced  it  —  it  was  familiar  and  descriptive  — 
but  I  won't  reproduce  it  here.  I  don't  know 
whether  Leolin  mentioned  it  to  his  mother :  she 
would  have  needed  all  the  purity  of  the  artist  to 
forgive  him.  I  hated  so  to  come  across  him  that  in 
the  very  last  years  I  went  rarely  to  see  her,  though 
I  knew  that  she  had  come  pretty  well  to  the  end  of 
her  rope.  I  didn't  want  her  to  tell  me  that  she  had 
fairly  to  give  her  books  away  —  I  didn't  want  to  see 
her  cry.  She  kept  it  up  amazingly,  and  every  few 
months,  at  my  club,  I  saw  three  new  volumes,  in 
green,  in  crimson,  in  blue,  on  the  book-table  that 
groaned  with  light  literature.  Once  I  met  her  at 
the  Academy  soiree,  where  you  meet  people  you 
thought  were  dead,  and  she  vouchsafed  the  informa 
tion,  as  if  she  owed  it  to  me  in  candour,  that  Leolin 
had  been  obliged  to  recognise  insuperable  difficulties 
in  the  question  otfonn,  he  was  so  fastidious  ;  so  that 
she  had  now  arrived  at  a  definite  understanding  with 
him  (it  was  such  a  comfort)  that  she  would  do  the 
form  if  he  would  bring  home  the  substance.  That 
was  now  his  position  —  he  foraged  for  her  in  the 


GREVILLE    FANE.  2/5 

great  world  at  a  salary.  "He's  my  'devil/  don't  you 
see  ?  as  if  I  were  a  great  lawyer :  he  gets  up  the 
case  and  I  argue  it."  She  mentioned  further  that 
in  addition  to  his  salary  he  was  paid  by  the  piece : 
he  got  so  much  for  a  striking  character,  so  much  for 
a  pretty  name,  so  much  for  a  plot,  so  much  for 
an  incident,  and  had  so  much  promised  him  if  he 
would  invent  a  new  crime. 

"He  has  invented  one,"  I  said,  "and  he's  paid 
every  day  of  his  life." 

"What  is  it?"  she  asked,  looking  hard  at  the 
picture  of  the  year,  "Baby's  Tub,"  near  which  we 
happened  to  be  standing. 

I  hesitated  a  moment.  "  I  myself  will  write  a 
little  story  about  it,  and  then  you'll  see." 

But  she  never  saw ;  she  had  never  seen  anything, 
and  she  passed  away  with  her  fine  blindness  unim 
paired.  Her  son  published  every  scrap  of  scribbled 
paper  that  could  be  extracted  from  her  table-drawers, 
and  his  sister  quarrelled  with  him  mortally  about  the 
proceeds,  which  showed  that  she  only  wanted  a  pre 
text,  for  they  cannot  have  been  great.  I  don't  know 
what  Leolin  lives  upon,  unless  it  be  on  a  queer  lady 
many  years  older  than  himself,  whom  he  lately 
married.  The  last  time  I  met  him  he  said  to  me 
with  his  infuriating  smile  :  "Don't  you  think  we  can 
go  a  little  further  still  —  just  a  little?"  He  really 
goes  too  far. 


WORKS   BY   HENRY   JAMES. 

A   NEW   VOLUME   OF  STORIES. 

THE    LESSON    OF   THE    MASTER, 

AND   OTHER  STORIES. 
12mo,  cloth  extra,  $1.OO. 

THE    PRINCESS   CASAMASSIMA. 

12mo,  $1.25. 

We  find  no  fault  with  Mr.  Henry  James's  "  Princess  Casamassima."  It  is  a 
great  novel;  it  is  his  greatest,  and  it  is  incomparably  the  greatest  novel  of  the  year 
in  our  language.  .  .  .  From  first  to  last  we  find  no  weakness  in  the  book;  the  drama 
works  simply  and  naturally;  the  causes  and  effects  are  logically  related;  the  theme 
is  made  literature  without  ceasing  to  be  life.  —  Harper's  New  Monthly  Magazine 
Editor's  Study. 

THE    REVERBERATOR. 

12mo,  $1.OO. 

The  public  will  be  glad  to  find  Mr.  James  in  his  best  vein.  One  is  thankful  again 
that  there  is  so  brilliant  an  American  author  to  give  us  entertaining  sketches  of  life. 
—  Boston  Herald. 

THE    ASPERN    PAPERS, 

AND   OTHER   STORIES. 
12xno,  $1.OO. 

The  stories  are  told  with  that  mastery  of  the  art  of  story-telling  which  their  writer 
possesses  in  a  conspicuous  degree.  —  Literary  World. 

PARTIAL    PORTRAITS. 

12mo,  $1.75. 

Henry  James  has  never  appeared  to  better  advantage  as  an  author  than  in  this 
delightful  volume  of  critical  essays.  —  Boston  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

THE   BOSTONIANS. 

12mo,  $1.25. 

Unquestionably  "  The  Bostonians  "  is  not  only  the  most  brilliant  and  remarkable 
of  Mr.  James's  novels,  but  it  is  one  of  the  most  important  of  recent  contributions  to 
literature.  —  Boston  Courier. 

A    LONDON     LIFE,- 

AND   OTHER  STORIES. 
12mo,  $1.OO. 

His  short  stories,  which  are  always  bright  and  sparkling,  are  delightful.  .  .  .  Will 
bear  reading  again  and  again.  —  Mail  and  Express. 

FRENCH    POETS    AND    NOVELISTS. 

12mo,  $1.5O. 


MACMILLAN  &  CO., 

112   FOURTH   AVENUE,    NEW  YORK. 


WORKS  BY  HENRY  JAMES. 


THE   ASPERN    PAPERS, 

AND  OTHER   STORIES. 
12mo,  $1.00. 

It  is  as  a  short  story  writer  that  we  think  Mr.  James  appears  at  his  best, 
and  in  this  volume  he  may  be  read  in  his  most  attractive  and  most  artistic 
vein. — Boston  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

The  whole  of  the  work  is  artistic,  and  it  will  be  classed  among  Mr.  James's 
best  productions. — Morning  Post, 

In  this  story  the  impressions  given  of  the  poor  old  lady  with  her  extinct 
past  and  of  her  niece  are  as  moving  and  delicate  effects  as  Mr.  James  has 
arrived  at.  .  .  .  "The  Modern  Warning"  is  rich  in  nice  discriminations 
of  character  and  half-shades  of  feeling. — Scotsman. 

"  Louisa  Pallant  "  is  extremely  clever. — Academy. 

Mr.  Henry  James  is  at  his  best  in  "  The  Aspern  Papers."  .  .  .  For 
careful  finish,  minute  analysis,  and  vivid  description  of  both  the  scenes  and 
the  characters,  "The  Aspern  Papers"  may  take  high  rank  among  Mr. 
James's  stories. — Guardian. 

In  "The  Aspern  Papers"  lovers  of  Venice  will  find  a  charm.  .  .  - 
The  second  story,  "Louisa  Pallant,"  is  full  of  clever  touches  and  unex 
pected  turns. — Saturday  Review. 

The  stories  are  told  with  that  mastery  of  the  art  of  story-telling  which 
their  writer  possesses  in  a  conspicuous  degree. — Literary  World. 


PARTIAL    PORTRAITS. 

12mo,  $1.75. 

Henry  James  has  never  appeared  to  better  advantage  as  an  author  than 
in  this  delightful  volume  of  critical  essays.  ...  No  one  can  fail  to  ac 
knowledge  the  exquisite  charm  of  style  which  pervades  the  book,  and  the 
kind  appreciation  the  author  evinces  of  the  finer  and  subtler  qualities  of 
the  authors  with  whom  he  deals.—  Boston  Saturday  Evening  Gazette. 

In  these  articles  we  have  him  at  his  very  best,  and  it  is  hard  to  tell  which 
is  the  better,  his  clearness  of  insight  and  suggestiveness  of  statement,  or 
the  graceful,  brilliant,  often  epigrammatic,  art  with  which  his  ideas  attract 
and  charm.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  with  this  book  before  us,  that  Mr, 
James  is  one  of  our  best  American  critics.—  Public  Opinion. 

MACMILLAN  &  Co.,    112  FOURTH  AVENUE,   NEW  YORK. 


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